The initial pictures in this article are courtesy of John Moores of "Windup Film Works" of Canada and show
the progress of the Littlefield Collection's (California) Panther as at May 2004. All pictures are
copyright and are used on this site with the permission of John Moores and Jacques Littlefield.
I have subsequently been provided with additional pictures from the Littlefield organisation which
show the sheer amount of work undertaken on this vehicle.
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The Rotisserie - allows welding to be carried out horizontally, just as in
the factory.
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Is that a new turret ring I see or the original restored?
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A very clean and neat hull.
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Note the very substantial piece of curved armour to protect the final drive.
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A close up of that unique jointing system used in heavy German AFVs. Note the crudity
of the weld finish.
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Suspension arms, they are sitting at odd angles as the torsion bars have
yet to be installed.
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Note that the arms face forward (leading) rather than trailing as
you would expect. It is all to do with wheel spacing and fitting the torsion
bars into the available spacein the hull.
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LHS running gear view.
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I think this is a suspension arm bump stop mount.
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All but finished. View of unit on other side of vehicle
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A blurry shot of the LHS rear and an unidentified tank.
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A good view of the rear hull interior.
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LHS rear bay - radiators, fans, fuel and oil tanks live in here.
A very nice stainless steel fuel tank appears to have been made to fit in
here. I doubt the original was stainless, but can well understand why the
repro is.
Update from Littlefields: The gas tanks that are pictured are actually not
made from Stainless. When this picture was taken the tanks had been installed
to have the mating brackets welded to them. Soon after this picture the tanks
were removed and painted. One interesting fact is that our upper fuel tanks
were damaged beyond use by the explosion and rust while our lower tanks were
actually fairly solid and we have cleaned them up to reuse.
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The fact that they have had to make a new engine cover suggests
that this vehicle was either a parts donor or quite incomplete when obtained.
I note the steel was made in Canada, authenticity has to give way to economics
at some point......
Update from Litlefields: The rear engine cover was made using the damaged
original for a template. The original was distorted from the explosion.
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The LHS rear shock absorber (centre) and what I think is the
idler tension adjuster (upper most in pic, large screw thread). The braided
pipe is from the centralised greasing station.
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The object lying to the right of the access hole is a torsion
bar mount (serves to all ow double lenght torsion bars). Note the central
greasing station at LH top of pic - an excellent teutonic idea.
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A better vew of the greasing station, I am curious as to why
they have used modern pattern greas nipples as I am reasonably sure they
should be the WW2 style flat ones?
Answer from Littlefields: The grease nipples that you see in the photo
are temporary until we are able make the correct ones. There are grease
fittings available that are close to original (but not close enough) so
we are going to make them exactly like the originals.
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RHS rear bay.
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Engine bay again.
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Fighting compartment facing rear and firewall.
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A view of the odd circular transmission mounts. I am glad I
am not the one installing it in there.
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Front RHS shock absorber with it's safety cover and greasing line.
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Re-alignment tank style. Fixing the explosion damage I would say.
Note
the rust on the hull side (top RHS of picture).
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Looking to the rear over the hull roof.
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Amazing how roomy tanks are without the mechanicals.
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Why the jack? I don't know. I do know that when you pulled the
transmission out of an M3 and M3A1 Stuart that you had to jack the hull
apart. So perhaps the Panther hull also needs the transmission
for rigidity reasons?
Answer from Littlefields: The large hydraulic jack you see in the front
of the fighting compartment is actually holding up the large casting
that houses the drivers vision block. This casting is held in place by
large castle nuts.
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Is the battery cut-off switch a modern improvement or did the
Germans have them too? (I know from experience that US armour did, but it
certainly wasn't of the type in this pic.)
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For those who are wondering why the torsion bars have not been installed, here
is the reason. Torsion bars are a very good form of suspension, far superior to volute
or horizontal volute spring systems as used on WW2 US tanks or leaf springs as used on
earlier German vehicles. However, they do use up hull interior space, are heavy and
are expensive. They are also particularly sensitive to damage. Even such vehicles
as the M113 family of APCs, using modern materials have still had to resort to
wrapping the torsion bars with electrical tape in order to protect them. There is
a story of how the British occupation forces in Germany at the end of WW2 rounded
up the former factory workers at a Panther/Jagdpanther factory and got them to
finish construciton of the remaining hulls. A British officer who until that point
had found the German workers to be respectfull and dilligient made the mistake of
walking across the torsion bars installed in a hull. He very quickly learned that he
had just committed the ultimate transgression. Nothing quite compares to being told
off by a German and it was an experience he didn't forget.
Even a scratch or rust pit will cause a torsion bar to fail in use.
The ones for this vehicle are being made to order, in Europe, which won't be cheap!
Littlefields: Since these pictures have been taken we have added the machine gun ball
mount, started to zimmerit the lower surfaces of the hull and prepared the hull for the
new torsion bars that are on their way from Europe. We are also in the process of
rebuilding the transmission, steering/brake units, final drives and all the various
hydraulic subassemblies that will make this tank once again functional.
Doug: To the original "recipe" or something more permanent?
Littlefields: My co-worker, Greg, revised the recipe in an effort to make it more durable.
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A familiar enough shot of a Panther ball mount.
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But here is what you rarely see, the inside details!
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Zimmerit! - the stuff that seems to hold so much fascination for the
modelling community.
My thanks to John Moores for supplying the original pics. Also to Brian M. for
the additional pictures and information about work undertaken on the vehicle.
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