Yet again another iconic tank, still determining if the plate says A or G. It's probably an Ausf.G, as I don't think many Ausf. As survived the war. In any case, I'm keeping both designations just in case, as unlike the Ausf.D model (which lacked a lot of features like hulk MG), the A and G models are very similar to one another; in fact, the biggest change that I know of when going from the A model to the G model was the engine/transmission being a more improved version of what the Panther started with.

History of the Panther pretty much starts with the T-34 and the VK 30 project; initially you had the Henschell and Porsche models, as well as Daimler-Benz's proposal which was very similar in design to the T-34. DB (Daimler-Benz) would make another design that was also heavily reminiscent of the T-34, but their proposal lost out to MAN's design, which became the actual Panther after several improvements.

Service record starts with the notorious Battle of Kursk; around 200 were deployed, however the tank suffered from some serious problems in the way of engine/transmission being unreliable and the crews for the tanks not being fully trained for operation. In spite of this, the tank was definitely a formidable machine when employed properly, and reportedly held a high kill count (around 250 or so) despite making up a very small percentage of the German tank force used at Kursk.

Following Kursk, the Germans would be largely on the defensive, with the numbers of these tanks slowly dwindling due to attrition. Besides the Eastern Front, Panthers were also being employed in , with about 150 tanks being present during the Normandy Invasion. Although the Ausf.G model was by this point the main model of Panther, a few As and Ds were probably lingering about; interestingly, the Panther seemed to have trouble navigating the bocage of Normandy...which honestly checks out when you that those things are basically walls of dense shrubbery and trees. There was also the infamous battle of Arracourt, which saw a whole Panther brigade get ripped to shreds by M18s; a lot of that can be attributed to poorly trained crews, US forces using "shoot and scoot" tactics, and also the foggy weather conditions that were present during that battle, though.

The Battle of the Bulge was another major theater in which these tanks participated, although by that point the Germans were in too deep to have been able to turn the tide of the war around. Fuel shortages pretty much compounded on whatever reliability problems still lingered for these tanks, though that didn't detract from their lethality in combat.

Post-war, some Panthers saw service in the French Army, but this didn't last very long, especially considering the French typically don't like relying on foreign equipment. Beyond that, most Panthers were probably broken down for scrap.

A very cool tank. Not much else to add (well, there's variants but none of the ones besides the Jagdpanther ever got built...because the factories all went boom by late 44, early 45.