A very sloping glacis front and then the gun We had no answer to them, we couldn't see where they was coming from. This was another vehicle, like the Panther, like the Tiger, it was another vehicle that the Allies couldn't really deal with because it was too good.Įrnest Leppard, 8th Armoured Brigade: "I mean there was eleven of us went over the hill and there it was picking us off. But even though it appeared in very, very small numbers there was an immediate impression on the British armed forces.
The first time the Allies come across this is at the end of the Normandy campaign just as the Allies are breaking out into the interior of France and there's only a very, very small number sent over, about 12 to 16, sent over to face the thousands, literally thousands, of Allied Sherman tanks that are coming in the opposite direction. The Jagdpanther's frontal armour is 80 millimetres thick rising to 100 millimetres around the gun mantlet, which is very, very thick for armour of this type of the war and on the sides it's still 5 centimetres thick which is still pretty damn good. This means that a lot of incoming enemy shells will simply ricochet off and won't even attempt to penetrate the armour. The significant advantage that the Jagdpanther has got is the degree of slope on the front of the vehicle if the enemy is coming at you straight on which is 30 degrees. And his tank was hit, the tank split and the turret blew off the tank and his crew were completely and he were completely incinerated." This was also used on the King Tiger, the huge battle tank used right towards the end of the was, so this was in effect the best German tank killer gun they had.Ĭharles Farrell, 3rd Bn Scots Guards: "Our second in command was called Sydney Cuthbert and he came full-on with one of these Jagdpanthers which you remember had the very latest 88mm in them. The Jagdpanther was armed with an 88 millimetre PAK 43 gun which is a development of the very very famous German 88 of the Second World War with an even higher muzzle velocity than the earlier versions which are used on the Tiger tank. Initially, there are supposed to be 150 of these produced every month, but fortunately for the Allies, by the end of the war only about 400 have been actually built and that's primarily because of the strategic bombing campaign against the German factories which cuts back their war production cuts back German war production to about, in this case, to less than a quarter of the number of vehicles that were supposed to be manufactured. Turned out to be a German Jagdpanther and the muzzle of the 88 millimetre which these Jagdpanther carried and that muzzle seemed to come on and on across the ride forever and ever."
Lord William Griffiths, 2nd Bn Welsh Guards: "And there silhouetted coming down the road behind us was just about the largest tank I'd ever seen. The best tank destroyer of the German army of the second world war. So instead of producing more and more turreted tanks as the war goes on instead, they make more and more of these tank destroyers, these Panzerjäger as they're called, and Hitler comes up with the idea of placing a heavy 88 millimetre gun on a Panther tank chassis, another really good really well-designed tank, and because it uses this proven design as the basis of everything else that's built up on top of it it becomes a very reliable gun platform. There's no real need for a tank to be able to fire in all directions at the same time because they're waiting for the Allies to come on to them. The Germans by the late stage in the war when these are deployed are on the strategic and tactical defensive.
The idea for the tank destroyer principallyĬomes about in the German army because they are much easier to manufacture and cheaper to manufacture than turreted vehicles, much less moving parts. It's basedon the Panther chassis and is a tank destroyer, not a tank because it hasn't got a turret. So this is an Sd Kfz 173 Jagdpanzer tank which means 'hunting panther' in the literal translation, it was named by Hitler himself. The best tank destroyer of the German army of the Second World War. The Jagdpanther is probably the most impressive German tank destroyer design of the Second World War because it has that great combination of firepower with the PAK 43 88 millimetre gun and the proven Panther tank chassis which is reliable and also very well defended.