“Panther Variants 1942–45 (New Vanguard)”, by Hilary Doyle and Tom Jentz, illustrated by Mike Badrocke

 

48 pages, Osprey Publishing, ISBN-13: 978-1855324763

Who doesn’t like tanks, amiright? (alright, hippie, shut up and sit down). If necessity really is the mother of invention, then nothing illustrates this saying like the Panther tank – or, if you like, the Sd.Kfz. 171 for Sonderkraftfahrzeug or “Special Purpose Vehicle”, or even, if you prefer, the Panzerkampfwagen V Panther, ‘til Adolf ordered the removal of the Roman numeral “V” – a German medium tank deployed during World War II on the Eastern and Western Fronts in Europe from about mid-1943 to the end of the war. This is because the Panther was designed to counter the Soviet T-34 tank and replace the Panzer III and Panzer IV, of which the T-34 made mincemeat. All this and more will you learn in Panther Variants 1942–45 by Osprey Publishing, one of my favorite publishers (although their books are neither large, nor cheap). Fair warning, though, for as the title states, these are “Panther Variants”, which refer to tank recovery vehicles, command vehicles, flak vehicles, self-propelled artillery, stand-alone Panther turrets that were part of fortifications and, of course, the wicked-awesome Sd.Kfz. 173 Jagdpanther – that’s “hunting panther” – variant. There is also some discussion of the planned Panther II and planned future versions of the commonly used Panther that would have made use of different versions of turrets; most of the variants examined in the book were never put into production. The book discusses, basically, only the physical characteristics of these vehicles and the development of those characteristics (or the planned characteristics, in the case of the variants that were never produced); there is no discussion of combat performance, crews, or characteristics of these vehicles vis-à-vis those of the allies, etc. (the one and only exception to this is a British army report on the Panther turrets that were part of fixed fortifications, a report that showed how really effective these things were – each one destroyed by the allies in combat destroyed eight allied tanks in return). Well, what do you expect for 48 pages? All-in-all an excellent book for the specialist.