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Panther is the common name of a medium tank fielded by Nazi Germany in World WarII that served from mid-1943 to the end of the European war in 1945. The Panther's excellent combination of firepower, mobility, and protection servedas a benchmark for other nation s' late war and immediate post-war tank designs,and it is frequently regarded as one of the best tank designs of World War II. While sharing essentially the same engineas the Tiger I tank, it had better frontal armor, better gun penetration, waslight er overall and thus faster, and could hand le rough terrain better than the Tigers. The tradeoff was weaker side armor; the Panther proved to be deadly inopen country and shooting from long range, but vulnerable to close-quarterscombat. Also, the 75 mm gun fired a s lightly smaller shell than the Tiger's 88 mm gun, providing less high explosive firepower againstinfantry, though it was still quite effective. The Panther was also farcheaper to produce than the Tiger tanks, and only s lightly more expensive than the Panzer IV, as its design came to fruition at the same time that the ReichMinistry of Armament and War Production was making great effor ts to increasewar production . Key elements of the Panther design, such as its armor,transmission and final drive, were compromises made specifically to improveproduction rates and addressGermany'swar shortages, whereas other elements such as its highly compact engine and itscomplex suspension system remained with their elegant but complicatedengineering. Theresult was that Panther tank production was far higher thanwhat was possible for the Tiger tanks, but not much higher than what had beenaccomplished with the Panzer IV. At the same time, the simplified final drivebecame the single major cause of breakdowns of the Panther tank, and was aproblem that was never corrected.
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