Panther Tank. To deal with the threat of the Russian
T34 tanks on the Russian front it became imperative to design and
built a heavier tank for the German Army. After examining captured Russian
tanks, It was agreed that while the construction and design of
a new heavy 6-0 ton tank the Tiger was built a smaller but
effective 35 ton tank shod be also built. This gave berth to the
panther.
Panzer tank The German thoughts on Tank development
during the mid 1930's was based on the requirement of one light Tank and
one Medium tank. In 1935 various german Companies were given the
development contracts for the new medium tankthe PanzerKampfwagen PZKpFW III
Ausf J which had a total of 2,616 tanks built between March 1941 and July
1942. 650 .
The Tiger I (PZKPFW VI AUSF E ) was
built by Henschel. and a total of 1354 tanks were built in its two year
production period. August 1942 until August 1944. This very large and
heavy tank (57 tonnes) took 300,000 man hours to build which was twice the
man hours it took to build a Panther. First used n the Russian front with
502nd Schwere Panzerabteilung and was moved to Mga which
was close to Leningrad on the 29th August 1942 The Tiger first saw service in North Africa
with the 501st Schwere panzer Abteilung at the end of 1942 , in time
to take part in the Battle for Tunisia.
The
Konigstiger with its high level of armour and firepower, was without doubt
the heaviest operational German tank, which had no equivalent in the
allied tank armoury. First ordered in January 1943 with the
prototype appearing in October 1943. It was planned to have
the Henschel factory building 140 King Tigers a month, but by the end of
the war there was only a total of 487 built.
