Why was the Panther so shit, and how could it have been improved?

Why was the Panther so shit, and how could it have been improved?
>Put transmission in the back
>make the hull part at the back look like the MBT-70 so the engine deck is raised while the frontal part of the hull is lower leading to a lower profile and a less heavy UFP
>put ammo down on the floor now that the transmission in the middle has been moved leading to a lot of space being freed up
>make it use the easier produced schmalturm instead of the other weird turrets

Other urls found in this thread:

scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1842&context=cmh
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/44M_Tas
tankarchives.blogspot.com/2013/06/tank-reliability.html
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

>Why was the Panther so shit
Because it's failures are massively overstated by contrarians and because it was pushed into service prematurely, also it was built when there was a lack of important materials. Not to say there weren't other mistakes with it, but these were the worst.
Also, it was built to combat numerically superior Russian AFVs, so it was more of a heavily armored tank destroyer than a medium tank or early MBT like the M4 Sherman.
>how could it have been improved?
-Fixed mesh or sideskirts from the beginning
-Use the 88mm gun from the Tiger I (slightly worse armor-piercing round, but far better HE round)
-Maybe replace the overlapping road wheels (too complicated to repair quickly)
-Better optics for close-range combat

would the short 88 fit it though?
and what would you replace the suspension with? torsion bar?

>would the short 88 fit it though?
Iirc they built a Panther prototype with it, besides it was a shorter gun, so I'm pretty sure it would.
>and what would you replace the suspension with? torsion bar?
Probably, I don't really know much about that though. There were however also great advantages of the Panther's road wheels, such as a better weight distribution and excellent cross-country mobility.

bigger gun means more wieght, was already too heavy

the schmalturm was developed later afaik
it just needed better trained crews and sufficient infantry support, cooks given a gun is not the best support

>bigger gun means more wieght, was already too heavy
I think 300kg more are very tolerable for a massively superior multi-purpose gun if you intend to use the tank as a medium tank or MBT.

How about, for starters, not up armoring it to the point its so heavy that the transmission catches on fire when going up a slight incline? That would be nice.

>so heavy that the transmission catches on fire
Not due to the weight, but because it was sent into battle without being ready. That was due to Hitler, he actually delayed the offensive at Kursk because he thought the Panther and Ferdinand tank destroyers would be decisive.
Ironically, these two AFVs were extremely unreliable in the battle therefore because they were rushed into service and the Soviets had the opportunity to dig in and reinforce the Kursk salient, making a German victory practically impossible.

>Not due to the weight
Nah, not at all, why would an extra 10 tons, or so, make a difference on the drive train and transmission?

...

How about this one?

what makes it better than the panther?

Sure the extra weight wasn't exactly beneficial, but once the design was redone after Kursk and the model A and G were produced, this (catches on fire when going up a slight incline) problem didn't occur anymore, so it can't be due to the weight.

Not him, but come on. Le Panther 1947 is well after the war and going off of Ausf G variants, and with none of that strategic bombing or other mess that the Germans were in late war. They still listed the thing's average engine life as 1,000 km, which is well behind even unreliable Soviet tanks like the T-34 or the IS-ISU line. I realize that's not a transmission problem per se, but to pretend that it was only the early Panther variants that were mechanically unreliable and the problem was fixed with the later ones is simply a lie.

>slightly thicker armor
>easier to maintain
>cheaper
>no finicky final drive
>better cross-country performance
At least based on some prototype documents.

how did it work? was it lighter while being more heavily armoured? how?

> but once the design was redone after Kursk and the model A and G were produced, this (catches on fire when going up a slight incline) problem didn't occur anymore
But that's not true, they still had massive problems with the tank. The Panther was never fixed, they just got rid of the worst problems. Iirc during the battle of the bulge something like 30%-40% of German Panthers were unavailable due to mechanical problems.

>so it can't be due to the weight.
Things like the transmission and frontal drive were the same in the G model and had much the same problems.

>but to pretend that it was only the early Panther variants that were mechanically unreliable and the problem was fixed
I'm not saying they were reliable, but it wasn't really a problem: after the initial problems were fixed, the lifespan of the powertrain was far greater than the average time until a tank was knocked out in combat.
>well behind even unreliable Soviet tanks like the T-34
Source, please

I suggest you read this .pdf if you believe the Panther was some kind of a completely unreliable POS like many apparently like to claim: scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1842&context=cmh

It was just a design/prototype: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/44M_Tas

>I'm not saying they were reliable, but it wasn't really a problem: after the initial problems were fixed, the lifespan of the powertrain was far greater than the average time until a tank was knocked out in combat.
And if the powertrain was the weak link, that might matter. The final drive was the weak link, and often required actually loading and carrying the Panther for distances even as short as 25 km

>Source, please

tankarchives.blogspot.com/2013/06/tank-reliability.html

>"T-34: 2000-2500 km, 250-300 hours
For the Panther, I'm drawing from Spielberger. Panther & Its Variants page 160 which contains exceprts from the French report, and that

>On the other hand, the engine was not operable over 1500 km. The average engine life amounted to 1000 km. Engine replacement accomplished in 8 hours by an Unteroffiaer (mechanic by occupation) and 8 men with the aid of a tripod beam crane or a Bergepanther. Main gun can be replaced using the same equipment within a few hours. The German maintenance units performed their work remarkably well

german engineering)))))))))))

The short 88's breech isn't as large as the 75's so it would fit in the Panther with more room to spare

inb4 that american autist posts his meme statistics again

The Panther already has torsion bar suspension. What he's talking about is the interleaved wheels.

The alternative is to do a T-55 style roadwheel layout.

It's a lot lower due to being rear drive, which reduces the frontal profile, which reduces the area that needed to be heavily armored.

T-55 has armor pretty much equal to a tiger 2, but it weighs about half as much.

which the germans couldn't do thanks to not having access to the precise alloy that makes a torsion bar more ductile while not being brittle or overly flexible.

It would have been "improved" by not making it at all. It had a lower failure rate than the T-34 but there were fewer of them. That being said there were tons of empty panther's sitting in factories because the Germans didn't have the trained crews to put in them.

It would have been improved by not adding 10 tonnes of weight to it

>Critique a state-of-the-art war machine of its time almost eighty years after its invention

>wasted tons of engineering time to gears and transmission to fix a speedometer to a tank

>"state of the art"

>T34s and Shermans were more effective than the Panther

Later models of those tanks that were made at the same time as the panther were better, yes.

A Sherman Firefly or 34-85 is far more cost effective

Yes, they were.

Panther with a panzer iv turret

>That being said there were tons of empty panther's sitting in factories because the Germans didn't have the trained crews to put in them.
This is bullshit of the worst kind. Towards the end of the war, German tank divisions were chronically short of tanks, sometimes in the single digits.