This is a pretty cool website I stumbled on: Dierk's page Special - Cologne at war, tank duel at the cathedral (2) http://www.anicursor.com/colpicwar2.html
Fantastic forensic video work, research, and analysis on Dierk's part, whoever he is. I'm going to email my thanks to Dierk. I think the enhanced video shows an MP-40 SMG being held by one hand of the tank commander just outside and against the rim of his cupola. He's got a grip on it but it's not immediately positioned to fire. Perhaps he is worried about an American bazooka gunner appearing suddenly from behind the cover of the surrounding buildings to shoot his tank at close range. To counter this possibility he would need some kind of small arm, and an MP-40 would be much easier to handle from a tank hatch than a KAR-98 rifle or a StG-44 assault rifle.
I have often wondered why a pintle-mounted MG-34, or something similar, wasn't standard equipment on German tanks. The bow gun is nice, but who approaches an enemy tank from the front if he can go around the side? The bow gun on a Panther only could slew about 30 degs horizontally. Given the restricted vision and the cramped field of fire I'm willing to bet that WW2 bow gunners in every army hardly paid their way. The Centurion tank was designed in 1943-1944 and entered production in January 1945. When the first Centurion hit the ground in Belgium in May 1945, it was probably the best tank in the Allied inventory, Russian tanks included. And guess what? No bow gunner. All of them had a coaxial MG (usually an American .30 Browning) and many had a pintle-mounted MG as well (again, usually the old reliable 30 cal). German assault guns usually had a pintle-mount MG. But this may be because the StuGs were under the artillery department, so different officers than the panzer leaders were making the decisions about secondary armament on the assault guns. The panzersjagers were under the control of the tank arm of the Wehrmacht, and they lacked effective MGs just like the tanks. In some cases like the Ferdinand, the lack of an MG made the vehicle a total failure.
In Hunnicutt's Pershing book there is a good honest comparison between the Panther, Tiger I and the Pershing. He states that all three tanks have the ability to kill the other and that all three have certain advantages over the other, he gives the Panther the top rated spot of the three. One interesting advantage the panther had was that the turret was mounted further back on the hull. Any ricochet off the front glacias plate was more likley to miss the turret mantlet and do serious damage. The Tiger I and Pershings turrets were mpounted forward and would sustain some degree of damage with a similar hit. Pershing was however much lower in sillouette and harder to hit. Also pershing was 4 tons lighter than Panther and 16 tons lighter than Tiger I. Panthers 75 was a better hole puncher than both the 88 and the 90mm. Ultimatly he rates the tanks in order of Panther, Pershing and TigerI.