Wednesday 5 May 2021

A German Cat in King George's Court

As soon as a new enemy tank appears on the battlefield, it is critically important to study it and find out which of its strengths can be mitigated and which weaknesses can be exploited. In case of the Panther tank, the British spared no effort. A Panther shipped from the USSR was tested before British troops ever met one in the wild. In addition to tanks captured throughout the war, several Panthers were assembled under British supervision and taken back to the UK to perform thorough trials. Read what the British learned about this German beast in my latest article on Warspot.net.



6 comments:

  1. Well the 6pdr also manages to penetrate the mantled :)

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    1. "managing to penetrate" and being an "unprofitable target" are not mutually exclusive ;)

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  2. “Small arms fire on the vision slit” stinks of desperation. Last thing to try before you get squashed under the treads...

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  3. I love the wording of 'unprofitable target'. It reads like something a corpulently enlarged duke would say.

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  4. So the Panther's upper hull is both an "unprofitable target" and penetrated by the 17-pounder's non-APDS APCBC could punch through it at 800 meters? Given the fact that the Western and Italian fronts weren't known to offer very many long-range shooting opportunities, 800 meters seems pretty good.

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    1. The "unprofitable target" evaluation was an estimate based on the known thickness and slope of the plate. Experiments showed that the UFP performed worse than estimated due to poor quality of metal.

      And yeah, 800 meters is about the average engagement range in North Africa according to British research, in Italy the average engagement range was much lower.

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