Panther

Rawr means I love you in tank.

During Operation Barbarossa, the T-34 was a nasty surprise to the Panzer Corps. Not wanting his tanks to be outmatched by people he saw as inferiors, Hitler ordered something be made to not only match the T-34 but best it. What they eventually got was the Panther. Not as heavy as a Tiger, it was still pretty well armored and armed while being fast and could be a deadly combatant in a tank duel. When it was working at least.

Mid War

Die Stats

IRL

meow meow meow

Panzerkampfwagen V, better known as the Panther, was cheaper, more reliable, more efficiently-built with its sloped armor, and just as good a tank as the legendary Tiger I. Its 75mm cannon did not have the same firepower or effective range as the Tiger's 88mm KwK, but it was still plenty capable. Although it did suffer from reliability problems (a common theme with German heavy armor designs later in World War II), the Panther offered almost as much combat capability for vastly less complexity and cost than the Tiger. Indeed, some historians argue that it ties or at least competes with the T-34 for best tank design of WWII.

The sloped armor was shamelessly stolen from the Soviet T-34, but the Germans copied Ivan's homework well. Manufactured in considerably greater numbers than the Tiger, the Panther served on every front with numerous divisions.

Despite that, the Panther still had a lot of technical issues, most of which came down to the fact that it was rushed into production without testing to find all the bugs. It was maintenance-heavy and both its engine and transmission had a bad tendency to crap out in battle. Its initial turret design came with a rounded front mantlet that acted as a shot trap; if a shell hit the bottom of the mantlet, it could and would ricochet downward, through the thinner roof armor of the crew compartment. Like the Tiger, it was a gas guzzler, which was important given that Germany had limited petroleum resources, and by the time it was widely introduced after Kursk the Third Reich's logistical system was already badly overstretched and on the verge of collapsing entirely, especially on the Eastern Front. Just as importantly, by the time it was introduced crew attrition had become an increasingly pressing issue. There were teenagers entrusted with crewing and even commanding these in the 12th SS Panzer Division in the summer of 1944.

The legacy of the Panther lives on in modern times, with Rheinmetall introducing the Panther KF51 in 2022. Armed with a 130 mm gun alongside a suicide drone launcher, protected by APS with modular armor, and given an improved power train, it's basically an upgraded Leopard 2A4. Aka the Leopard 3 in all but name.