Pantherturm - Germany's Last Ditch Tank Bunkers

[Music] some months ago I made a video about how in the Battle of Berlin redundant Panther tanks were buried up to their turrets at important Crossroads and used fairly effectively as bunkers during the fight to stop the Red Army well the Germans didn't just half bury Panthers but also created an entirely new type of defensive fortification using Surplus Panther Tank turrets the pter oal T or Panther East wall turret and despite the name many actually ended up in use on the Western Front the panther TM came in three basic forms with two types actually seeing action the idea was ridiculously simple since very early in World War III the Germans had utilized redund abundant or outdated German tank turrets or foreign tank turrets as static bunkers or gun positions known as to Brooks to the British after the battle where they first came across them as we see here during a visit I made to Jersey and the Channel Islands you can see this old French tank turret has been incorporated into a German bunker a classic to Brook position the idea was simple sink a concrete bunker into the ground and mount a tank turret on top of it in the case of the panther tum only the tank turret would be visible above ground the Germans developed two types that were actually used in combat the pum aasat which consisted of a prefabricated steel twostory bunker with the tank turret mounted a top and the pant dry beton Circle or concrete base production was split roughly between the the two types although name for the Eastern Front only 36 ended up actually installed on Eastern front fortifications by March 1945 while 182 were installed on the Atlantic Wall of the zek freed line the vest V defenses and 48 on the gothic line in Italy plus two used for training and demonstration purposes for a total of 268 Panther turrets you may be wondering why these turrets and their 75 5 mm kwk 42 guns were not placed on Panther chassis creating tanks which would seem much more useful than static gun turrets that's 268 less Panther tanks than Germany desperately needed in 1944 to [Music] 45 well up until 1943 only obsolete or foreign tank turrets were used for such static bunkers but now the Germans would direct new production turrets away from the Panther Tank program for uses to Brooks the reason that the panther was chosen was simple the factories were producing more turrets than tank chassis meaning a surplus was developing a most important ly the Panther's armor and Armament made it able to withstand enormous punishment and also take out the latest Allied armor types they were first deployed into combat on the gothic line in Italy in April 1944 and proved to be highly effective the Panther tuum 1 was the two-story steel structure organization Tau developed and 119 of this type would end up on the Western Front the panther term 3 which required concrete base and soup structure had to be built in situ some of these were used in the defense of the Aran region in late 1944 unfortunately for the Germans building such implements was timec consuming and most were actually overrun before they were completed and the panther turrets were lost to the enemy a backup line of 30 pan tum using this time wooden super structures were installed in the black forest by March 1945 facing the advancing French first Army though didn't appear to be very effective the panther turrets mounted in this way had power supplied from the bunker below and the gun of course retained all of its Optics and was devastatingly effective particularly in the Ambush the panther TM was a very low Target with just the turret and the gun exposed and with proper camouflage was very difficult to spot particularly for advancing Allied armored vehicles the panther turret is heavily armored and so it could withstand a lot of punishment and the gun was powerful and a noted Tank Killer the crew lived in a bunker below the turret and ammunition was also stored underground they were used to carefully dominate certain geographical features or likely lines of enemy advance and would of course be supported by infantry and machine gun nests and often had to be reduced by infantry assaults after artillery and mortars had Stripped Away the camouflage from the bunkers and the protecting [Music] infantry Panther turmer graphically illustrate the Desperate Measures imminent defeat forced onto the German Army in 1944 to 45 thanks for watching please subscribe and share also visit my Audi book Channel War stories with Mark Felton you can also help to support both of my channels at PayPal and patreon details in the description box below

Channel: Mark Felton Productions

Views: 294,840

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Id: 5PKhXLU8qz4

Length: 6min 14sec (374 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 28 2024