Jagdpanther shot trap (maybe)

I've always been curious that the Jagdpanther seemed to have a bad shot trap around its mantlet. The Mark IV's and later Mark III's had the pig's head (sau-kopf) covering. While there weren't a lot of Jagdpanthers, 4 to 5 hundred as I remember, one would have thought they'd "fix" it if it was bad.

On the other paw, the Panther turret was only improved very late in the game with the F version.

 

The recessed casting in the glacis was changed for production simplification and not for any improvement in protection (although the later one was thicker and heavier) - it allowed the gun and mantlet assembly to be inserted complete in the later version, whereas the early model needed a time consuming multi-stage mounting method - insert and support gun, then surround/mantlet, then connect them together, then connect to hull.

Almost all the pictures i have found of destroyed Jagdpanthers show penetration of the side armour, usually into the engine compartment, or top damage from aerial weapons. Certainly the western allies had few tanks that could take on a Jagdpanther usefully from the front, so the tactics would have been to attack from side or rear or call in air support. I suspect that the mantlet shot trap was not a big issue as attacking from the front would not have been much use. it is interesting though that all other jagdpanzers and sturmpanzers of every hull type had an external mantlet of some sort or other rather than the Jagdpanther recessed style, so maybe it was a poor design or at least seen as such (the projected jagdpanther2 (128mm) did have a proposed mount very similar to the existing one although would have been at turret height not in hull front).

If you see a Jagdpanther from the front with the gun pointed straight towards you, the shot trap seems very small to me - the vast majority of photos show the gun elevated significantly which makes what you describe appear more pronounced. This may have been the usual travelling position for the gun due to its length and the speed/suspension combination in the vehicle, so the gun didn't dig in.

Wikipedia says 415 total were built, although i have seen higher numbers claimed elsewhere see no reason to disbelieve 415.

The panther tank turret went through a variety of mods, and most were aimed at simplifying production or reducing the shot trap (in fact the ausf G model was the main mantlet variation) (panthers were produced in order marks D, A, G, F) - in the end the most effective mod was thickening the hull roof in front of the turret, and some of the early style turrets were produced right to the end of the war. The turret proposed for the panther F (only a few prototypes built) was intended eventually to mount the 88mm gun instead of the 75mm when possible.

Hope this helps

 

Yes, thank you, that was helpful!

I had not thought in terms of getting in front to face the 88 with the attendant risk

And, yes, the relatively small exposure would seem to indicate it was not a major issue. Note too the StuG III's even with the pig's head mantlet had a shot trap of sorts.

Jentz in Germany's Panther Tank had a nice section on the Panther F and another on "8.8 cm Panther-schmalturm and other fantasies" his section title.

 

Yes, Stug IIIs, as well as, Stug IVs, Stug IV/70s, JagdTigers, Jagdpanzer 38(t) Hetzers, King Tigers, and the un-produced Panther F & Panther II. So, somehow, I doubt that it was considered a problem.

For a good comparison look at the different turrets on the King Tiger; the Porsche turret placed on the first 50 hulls and the later Henschel production turret.

 

If I had to guess, I would say it had something to do with balancing the 20' long L/71 in the hull of the Jagdpanther; they were probably trying to move the CG of the Pak 43 back as far as possible to keep the Jagdpanther from being nose-heavy, like the Jagdpanzer IV/70 was.

 

By the way, I meant to post this subject in Weapons & Technology... the reason it's here is because of fast fingers and a (very) slow mind. I do apologize.

 

I harddley everr makee a mistakke myselff.

 

I think Stitchy has it right - the recessing of the Jagdpanther gun was due to keeping the weight as far aft as possible, there were endless problems with the JpzIV/70, from a combination of nose weight from much thicker frontal armour than the standard late Pz IV and also from the extremely forward positioning of the gun. Apparently the problem was so bad that the front two road wheels used to regularly shed their rubber until an all steel wheel started to be used for those two sets.

On a more general note - can anyone find an afv with a decent sized weapon that doesn't have a fair sized shot trap of some kind - even if you look post-war the trend seems to be for shot traps to be unavoidable and to have got larger (as an exception the S-103 comes to mind but that's not really what i mean). I think the Jagpanzer 38(t) has the least pronounced trap of any i can think of from ww2. Anyone want to raise?

 

Ontos?

 

The only other one I can think of is the German post-War Kanonenjagdpanzer.

 

basically a hetzer remake, if i remember rightly? (and the ontos definitely doesn't count, LOL). Anyone out there got any WW2 ideas? I'm still hunting through my stuff but nothing yet.

 

almost there i think - the T28/T95 super heavy has almost no shot trap to speak of but not quite WW2 so still looking In fact what about turreted stuff?