Panther Tank Enthusiasts' Manual: Panzerkampfwagen V Panther (SdKfz 171) - An insight into the design, construction and operation of the finest medium tank in the Second World War Hardcover – August 27, 2019

After buying many books to try to learn something about Panthers, I was very pleased. Most books briefly touch on them or give you some "facts and figures". Nowhere was I able to find this much information in one place. It cut out a lot of fruitless searching. Recommend it.

Bought the book as a reference for building models. Very good. Love all the books in the series.

Many New photos with lots of details

This book needs more data. But it's good

Although I wasn't terribly thrilled with Mark Healy's "workshop manual" on the T-34 tank, this follow-up is a better book, albeit one with a glaring flaw. While it still focuses excessively on the history of the tank for a technical reference, it's a much more well-rounded and in-depth look at the type. Along with a look at the tank's development and each of the produced variants, it also goes into a fair amount of detail on the tank's suspension, engine, transmission, cooling and fuel systems, and turret and armament. There's also a fairly extensive history of the tank at war, first-hand accounts from both Allied and Axis perspectives, and some revealing commentary on its myriad flaws from the men who crewed it in combat. For once, we get a warts-and-all study of the Panther, a far cry from the hagiographic descriptions of German armor we usually get.While I'm not the sort of crank to slap a one-star rating on a book just because it doesn't have lots of pretty color photographs, I do expect a certain visual quality from a Haynes title. Unfortunately, that's this book's major downfall; large parts of it are simply ugly to look at. Many of the wartime photos are very dark and grainy, have blown contrast, excessive amounts of digital processing and compression artifacts, failed attempts at grain removal, and so on. Considering how much money and resources Nazi Germany invested in propaganda, you'd think there'd be better pictures of the tank than the ones here! There are some excellent photographs that are printed too small, and some mediocre ones which take up entire pages. The exterior drawings by Mark Rolfe are nice, as are the color photographs of museum examples, but on the whole, the period imagery is wildly inconsistent.This isn't a bad book, but it's rather typical of some of the mid-tier, not-great-not-terrible work Haynes pumps out when they aren't terribly interested in quality control. I'm not a German armor fanatic, but I found "Panther: Germany’s Quest for Combat Dominance" to be a more informative, and more enjoyable, read. With some polishing, this could have been a four-star book.

Husband liked it

Good knowledge about mechanics of a panther