German War Files : Panzer III - Part 1

The Panzer III emerged as one of the formative images of German military success in the newsreels produced by the Propaganda Ministry, documenting the Blitzkrieg victories of the early war years. While proving adequate to the task of countering allied armor in France and the Western desert, the fateful encounter with the superior Soviet T-34 tank, following the invasion of Russia in 1941, revealed the technical shortcomings of the Panzer III.

Its days as a battle tank were numbered, but the Panzer III could still be seen serving in the East as a command tank until 1944, and in other secondary theaters such as Norway until German€™s surrender.

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[elvee88]

widescreeeen, oh its not :) nice upload

[Leandrojaques]

Lol

thanx =D

[aloxited]

Thanks for uploading. I really like these VAF documentaries. They are very informative and stand above all others.

[SPLCr137]

I love the panzer III especially the Ausf. L version with the turret box and 50mm. Its gorgeous!

[Mutton78]

My favourite is the N model with the short barreled 75mm gun. : )

But I like all the models of the Panzer III

Its a state of the art tank.

[BaileyLottiewe774]

hm ich bin blond

[megabootyfan]

panzer III and IV was the best until the t-34/76 or t-34/85

[fesbahn]

interesting tidbit on the 50mm gun thing with hitler and the projected consequences. what if?

[Tyco200]

@jasincl Also note that the few tank to tank major battles of WWII mostly saw Panzer IVs in use. even after their 80mm upgrade, the 75 still got through them at 800 meters. Panzer IV could still, however, take the Sherman down at about a thousand meters. 76 variant, now having an actual need on the battlefield, was making its field day (something most historians forget). 76 M1 guns tore through Tigers at over 1,600 meters, Panthers at 1,400 meters and Panzer IVs beyond 1,800 meters.

[Tyco200]

@jasincl Panzer IV was much more useless than the Sherman. When the Sherman came out, they built two models. The infantry model, that was better at shelling enemy positions with the well-known 75mm M3 gun, and an anti tank model, featuring the almost unknown 76mm M1 gun. The 75 was good enough in the early days of 1942 to slaughter just about everything at over a thousand meters Germany had (Panzer III had 51mms, Panzer IV 45mms in F.2 model.)

[Tyco200]

@jasincl Hell no! King Tiger was the greatest disaster besides the Tiger itself. Slow, fragile and unreliable, extremely costly and absolutely useless and easy to flank even with the Sherman armed with a 75. As for the Leopard? Hah! Abrams has better fire control, much better armor and is equal in just about everything else. Only problem is the weight. Besides that? I'd love to see the Leopard's side stowed ammo go OFF.

[redreaper2020]

@PkayerZxz2 the panzer 3/4 idea, of mixing parts and designing a new sloped superstructure, would have worked well. Though, from what I gather, they wanted to use 3 per side of the Panzer 4 suspension bogie, which would have been pretty dumb (leaf springs aren't exactly the best for offroad use. Reliable and capable of a heavy load, yes, but they suck for anything with high speed use. Why the Panzer IV was usually very, very slow offroad).

[PkayerZxz2]

@fuggsakes The reason why this didn't happen was because the Panzer III reached the limit of it's design. It could not handle a gun bigger than 50mm (it could only use a 75mm gun that was short, not long), nor could you just change the armor to being sloped. Then it would be an entirely new tank all together because you'd need a new hull. Because of this the Germans decided to change the III into an infantry support tank, which had been the IVs job, and change the IV into their MBT.

[barraki150]

@khanbaliq 5 year americunt