88mm Flak Gun and Panther Tank found in villa.
 

That's in a cellar in a villa, in Germany. More here;


Second World War tank and anti-aircraft gun found hidden in basement of villa in Germany - Telegraph


88's got a few rings round the barrel. The Panther looks superb. Nazi weaponry looks so brilliant and so advanced for its time-way ahead of Britain.. wonder what else is still out there.

The Panther was built by the British after war for evaluation purposes. In 1977 it was discovered in a scrap yard in West Ewell Surrey. It was bought by Herr Flick (yes really) and shipped to Germany for restoration.

Give the old fella his tank back ffs.

The 88mm was not only an anti-aircraft weapon but allegedly the best ant-tank gun as well

More pictures

Kellerfund in Heikendorf: Weltkriegspanzer und Flakgeschütz - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Panorama

Meanwhile, in the US of A ... Video: World's largest private tank fleet up for auction - Telegraph

I remember reading a magazine about it, they had a huge pile of scrap that they processed, new scrap permanently topping the pile up, eventually the yard was to be closed and the scrap pile was being run down and when they got to the bottom everyone was stunned to see the panther sitting there with its barrel sawn off and lying besides it.

Had this been an aeroplane and the facts in the Telegraph wrong then there would be a few outraged comments. All I will say here is that this is a late model Panther Ausf G and much later than the 1943 date for the tank quoted in the article. (Count the wheel rivets man!)

Regarding the famed 88mm gun in the anti-tank role I was once assured by a colonel in the Royal Artillery that the British 3.7" would have been superior in the same role but the military mind at the time would not develop a suitable projectile for ground targets as the nomenclature was Gun, Anti-Aircraft!

Great tank and gun in their day with well trained crews. Would not have liked to come up against either in a Sherman - would have been the worst of days - ex Tankie and ex 2nd Lt Rupert.


Regards
Mr Mac

88mm Flak Gun and Panther Tank found in villa.
 

...........

Agree with the above. Give the poor man his stuff back and leave him alone. Busybodies and snitchers helping to grease the wheels of the nanny state. :ugh: :mad:

Quote: The mayor of Heikendorf, Alexander Orth, who was present at the tank's remove, said the discovery came as no surprise, telling the newspaper that the owner "was chugging around in that thing during the snow catastrophe in 1978".

After the war the UK army took over the panzer tank factory and I believe using some of the original German labour plus all the parts which were lying around built I believe 17 tanks.

Some of these were shipped to the UK and they were extensively tested by the RME.

The big problem they encountered was in the drive line which left much be be desired. The post war Leopard seemed to address the faults which is why so many are still in service.

Regards

Col

Can't read the full article but I can't see why they couldn't just disable the weaponry & leave him alone with his collection. I'm assuming there's a specific law against it for them to act but still, there's ways & means to keep everyone happy.

Our tanks may have been "behind" but we outproduced Germany by about 18 to 1. Quantity, as Mr Stalin said, has a quality of its own.

And, yes, please give the man his tank back.

I remember during the Cold War being told that although the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact forces had the quantity of equipment, it couldn't compete with the quality of equipment in the West. I occasionally threw into the discussion that this flew in the face of the experience of WW2.......

My vote goes to the 17pdr. My father was a radio operator/gunner in a Sherman Firefly and he killed 2 Panthers and Tiger plus Mk3 and Mk4. The boxheads were good but they were scared of the 17pdr. I believe one got Wittman.

Navaleye - concur....especially when used with APDS ammunition. The Panther is usually quoted as the best medium tank of WW2, but I would put the British late war Comet well up there as one of the best.

The Krauts never quite got it right. The Panzer I, II, III and IV, the Panther and the Tiger/King Tiger were all 'good', but they all had deficiencies. The Panzers and Panthers had too narrow a track to match it with the T-34 in Russian winter conditions, the Tiger/King Tiger had the venerable '88 gun but was too heavy and slow.

Probably a good thing tbh.

p.s concur. Give the man his tank back.

Can anyone explain the device at the end of the gun barrel on the Panther ?


I've seen this on several tanks and have always been puzzled as to it's function and purpose ?

Its a Muzzle Brake.....the gases from the shot pass sideways through the device and help to stop some of the recoil although the side blast that this device produced could give away the gun's position. Therefore, some mobile anti-tank guns dispensed with it.

Wensleydale

He did the test firings for Sabot in Dorset. Unfortunately the planners placed the infantry ahead of the tank and wondered why they fell down when a sabot shell was fired.

Also a Firefly could could not fire on the move. It would strip the gearbox.

Does that reduce by much the exit velocity of the round?

When they took the goveners off for the Hamburg tank race they got to over 30mph. I not sure that would make a huge difference:eek:

When they took the goveners off for the Hamburg tank race they got to over 30mph. I'm not sure that would make a huge difference :eek:

Hardly any tanks of that era fired on the move. They would miss!

@ Stilton. That device is a muzzle brake, the purpose is to divert some of the enengy from firing the projectile to reducing the recoil (I think). Happy to be corrected.

Question. When all closed up in a tank, how does the gunner get to aim the gun? How does he do his sighting?

Thanks to the Lancaster's and B17's, flown by courageous men, perhaps!

They have an optical sight alongside the gun, they also have periscopes on the roof.

This is the machine gunners periscope, as you see it can rotate

http://s427.photobucket.com/user/Gar...ml?sort=3&o=19

Internal view

http://s427.photobucket.com/user/Gar...ml?sort=3&o=41

Thanks muchly :thumbsup:

Goudie :ok:
The failure of the Panther was mainly due to a very overstressed final drive (post WW2, the French operated the Panther and found it needed a final drive major overhaul after every 150km of use). This in turn was caused by industrial shortages forcing it to be built with lower strength steel in a less effective design. The two major problems were lack of high strength steel and lack of machine tools (the weak final drive had straight-cut gears as there was insufficient tooling to make the preferred helically-cut gears). The lack of machine tools was down to area bombing, which deliberately targeted this capacity. They didn't try to hit the machines, the idea was simply to blow the roofs off and let the weather do the work.

Coupled with this was the German policy of maximising output at the expense of spares. So the Panther would arrive at the front by rail, advance 100 km and break down. With no spares, the technicians would have to rob the spares off another u/s Panther. Except, of course, this was probably u/s because of a broken final drive also.
43% of Panthers at the battle of Kursk went u/s through mechanical failure.

So, arguably the Germans did produce enough tanks, but it was meeting this target at the expense of serviceability and spares which did them in.

Something always sinister about our germainian friends and their basements !

Re muzzle break it can serve three purposes

As already stated it reduces recoil by dirverting gas rearward and as it obeys newton's laws offsets the recoil by applying a forward pressure

Secondarily if diverted appropriatley it reduces elevation due to recoil and puts the gun back on original target ( or more closer) for a second shot if needed

I also understand ( although memory fades )!it can also give be used to reduce losses due to the resistance of air ahead of the round but obviously cannot increase pressure to increase range.. Something to with aperture size and location ( front whole is limiting and side vents have a bigger effect in releasing the pressure ahead of the shell and as they do for energising gases from the charge).. I am sure some one here can elaborated... It's all very complicated and nurse called nap time halfway through the explanation

The early Panthers also suffered from an overheating exhaust which often led to the tank catching fire. Many of the Kursk losses were from this source.

I am sure they would say that or was it effective air to ground and the il2 doing it's job... I guess the others would say that too!

Maintenance wasn't their strong point. The lost dozens outside Stalingrad during Operation Uranus when it was discovered that mice had decided that a hull was a nice place to keep warm while they ate the insulation off the electrical wiring. Nom nom nom!

Orac - since you had not specified which end of the gun, I nearly replied "a tank"...............


now I look at it, not that funny either, but it is a very hot afternoon, and I have just been to have a replacement exhaust delivered from UK fitted, and guess what, they sent Ford Focus gaskets.........for a Nissan X-Trail. So I am grumpy anyway!

My late grandfather was an instructor in the army during WWII and got chance to fire a 17pdr. He rated it as the most amazing weapon he every got to play with. The other plus point for the gun was it was air transportable in a Hamilcar, thus 6th Airborne had a few on the ground on D-day along with their prime movers. I do recall seeing somewhere that the Firefly crew got into a habit of trying to camouflage the front end of the gun to make it look like a standard 76mm gun, as the boxheads were scared of the Firefly and they would be the first tank to be engaged by the Germans if they spotted one. There is some debate about what got Wittman. Most of his troop on the day he was killed were taken out by Firefly's on his right flank. However on his left flank were a troop of Canadian standard Shermans hidden behind a large wall and one of them got a close range shot in the aft quarter of Withman's Tiger with a 76mm which was the shot that killed him.

You should try the free game War-Thunder online, trust me the Russians that developed it, seem to have thrown the book out as to what tanks are better than others, heck they even have T54's fighting Panthers.

The 17 pr and the 88mm were excellent tank guns but the Soviet JS with its 122mm gun firing a solid full bore shot would reduce any armoured vehicle to scrap metal. It was further developed after the war resulting in the T-10 which forced the western powers to scramble to find the equivalent. Neither the optimistically named Conqueror or the M-107 even came close.