Wednesday 12 June 2019

Panther Intel

"British Military Mission in the USSR
Moscow
July 9th, 1943

To: Major General Dubinin
CC: GABTU Chief

Contents: new German medium and heavy tanks
  1. I present to you the following information that we already communicated to the GABTU. This information comes from prisoners of war and captured documents and has not been confirmed.
    1. The "Panther" tank. This is likely a medium tank armed with a long 75 mm gun. It is said that it was copied from the Soviet T-34. It is said that regular tank companies are being re-armed with this tank. No further information exists.
    2. The "Tiger" tank. This is the German T-6 tank, presumably split into two types, the H type used in Africa and Soviet-German Front and the P type. Nothing is known as of yet on the P type. It is said that it is less satisfactory than the H type.
      Each tank regiment will have a battalion of Tiger tanks in the future.
  2. In addition to this, our letter T/946 sent to the GABTU on July 9th, 1943, contained improvements that were presumably made to the T-6 tank in Germany.
In addition to this, we have no information regarding present or future initiatives. We would be glad to receive whatever fresh information you have.

Representative of the Army Section, British Military Mission to the USSR, [signature]"

Via Yuri Pasholok



2 comments:

  1. I'm assuming that H and P stand for Henschel and Porsche respectively?

    As far as I know 2(?) of the failed Tigers built by Porsche weren't turned into Ferdinands and kept as Command tanks (Befehlswagen). Could those be what the intel is referring to?

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    Replies
    1. More likely that the intel wasn't aware of the H being selected as the main run and mistaking them as two production variants.
      They just heard about there being two variants of tiger.

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