In early 1943, the Soviets looked to capitalise on their morale-boosting win at Stalingrad and began an offensive against the Germans in the south, retaking territory including the city of Kursk. However, the mechanised Battle of Kursk witnessed the world’s largest armoured confrontation, as two sides equipped with a combined 8,000 tanks squared off. When it came to bloodshed, nothing on the Eastern Front could quite top the meat grinder that was Stalingrad, a bloody urban conflict that caused 2 million casualties and included the total annihilation of the German 6th Army. Many of which occurred on the Eastern Front, as Hitler’s Wehrmacht clashed with Stalin’s Red Army during Operation Barbarossa. The abbreviations mean that it was assembled by 823 Armoured Workshops (ARMD WKSP), Royal Electrical & Mechanical Engineers (REME), British Army of the Rhine (BAOR), based at the Maschinenfabrik Niedersachen (MNH) plant in Hannover.WWII, the greatest conflict in human history, had more than its fair share of significant battles. The small plate on the front shows where this tank was built.
This Panther was one of a group of tanks that were built under British supervision after the German factory in Hannover had been taken over by the Allies. Production of the Panther was slow and there were never enough of them to make a serious difference to the fighting in Russia, Italy or North West Europe. Its 75mm gun was a vast improvement on the Russian equivalent. Wide tracks spread the Panther’s weight when travelling over soft ground. The Panther’s suspension system was more complicated than that of the Russian T-34, involving torsion bars and 18 overlapping road wheels on each side. The Panther was larger and of much better quality than the T- 34. Hitler ordered that the T-34 be copied and the result was the Panther, which saw action for the first time at Kursk in 1943. When the Germans invaded Russia in June 1941, they were surprised by the quantity and quality of Soviet armour. The Panther is often believed to be the best German tank of the Second World War.
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