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Why did sloped armour make the Panther tank harder to destroy?
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M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks of the U.S. 1st Armored Division moving across the desert in northern Kuwait during the Persian Gulf War, February 1991.
Sloped armour made the Panther tank (Pz. V) harder to destroy because the angle of the plates was designed to cause incoming shells to ricochet off the surface rather than penetrate the vehicle.1
By angling the armour, the tank effectively increased the amount of material a projectile had to pass through compared to a vertical plate of the same thickness, while simultaneously increasing the likelihood that a shell would deflect upon impact. This design feature was one of the advanced characteristics adopted from the Soviet T-34, which had demonstrated the effectiveness of sloped armour against German forces earlier in the war.1