Original subtitles

- [Narrator] Armed with a workshop full of tools,

guided by detailed research,

these restoration crews are bringing a legend back to life.

This is the German built Panzerkampfwagen V, the Panther,

one of the most feared tanks of second World War,

Lethal, accurate, almost unstoppable.

One on one, nothing the Allies had could take it down.

Even today, the Panther's influence lives on.

And, now, the original tanks are so rare,

they're being hunted all over the world

to be rescued from oblivion.

(title music)

Some people collect stamps, some people collect coins,

then there are collectors who work on a massive scale.

You want to collect tanks?

You'll need a stack of cash.

You've got to handle a blow torch like a scalpel.

And, you've got to know your history down to

every last nut and bolt.

This is Jacques Littlefield.

He's assembled one of the largest

private tank collections in the world,

and it's on display in Portola Valley, California.

- [Jacques] The collection, at this point,

has approximately 220 vehicles.

Most of them are combat vehicles,

as opposed to soft skin vehicles,

and about 65 are actual battle tanks.

- [Narrator] This is Kevin Wheatcroft.

Stationed in Arnesby, England,

Kevin has more than 230 military vehicles.

(cutting torch)

(racket)

- [Kevin] Last year, it hit me,

and I realized that between two and four years

for a restoration, I'm not gonna live long enough

to restore everything that I own.

That's impossible.

- [Narrator] Both Kevin and Jacques are extremely wealthy.

They have to be.

A single restoration can cost millions.

You need a fully loaded workshop,

and a team of experts who can create new parts,

find old ones, and know how to put it all back together.

For serious collectors, there's always a holy grail.

(grinding)

Built in Germany, baptized in battle

in 1943, a tank so deadly, so feared,

Russian crews would capture them

and use them as their own.

The formidable Panzerkampfwagen V Panther.

- [Jacques] The Panther's a particularly interesting tank.

Historically it's considered, by many people,

to be the best tank design of World War II.

- [Kevin] To me, the Panther is probably

the most special of all the German tanks.

It looked right, it sounded right,

and most times, it worked right.

- [Narrator] The panther terrified the Allies,

for good reason.

Its 75 millimeter gun was deadly accurate

from over 3000 yards away.

Its armor was so tough, Allied guns couldn't penetrate it.

Facing off against an Allied tank,

the kill ratio was all in the Panther's favor.

- Once the Panther was sorted, technically,

for battle, it was virtually unstoppable, in its time.

It worked at the ratio of about five Shermans or nine T34s,

as a kill ratio, to knock one out.

So, that'll give you an idea of how

impressive the Panther really was.

- [Narrator] Today, a functioning Panther tank

is one of rarest machines in the world.

Both Jacques and Kevin have spent years

slowly bringing their Panthers back to life.

- [Kevin] The Panther owners club

is a very, very unique club, and

there's only four or five of us in the world.

I found out the hard way,

once you start, it's a very, very expensive road.

And, once you're part way down it,

there's really no turning back.

- [Jacques] I think we always kinda look at each other,

and wonder, are we both out of our minds, or what.

- [Narrator] If you want to assemble a tank,

first, you need to assemble the right crew.

Jacques has brought together some of the best in the world.

Greg Taylor is the Panther's project manager.

- [Greg] Well, I've had an interest

in military vehicles since I was a kid.

I had a World War II Dodge weapons carrier

when I drove to high school.

- [Narrator] Dave Marian started here when he was

still in high school.

He's a wizard with a blow torch,

or a laptop.

- [Dave] One of my responsibilities is to help

figure out how to rebuild or replace

or create the pieces were missing

or damaged, on the vehicle.

So I will take the original pieces that're damaged

and measure them and dimension them,

and figure out how to rebuild them.

(hammer striking metal)

- [Narrator] Keith Boles can fix just about anything,

with or without the manual.

(sanding)

- [Keith] We have approximately 400 years

worth of work here, so I hope I stay long enough to make it.

- [Narrator] During the Second World War,

Germany only produced about 6000 Panthers.

Tiny numbers compared to the 50,000

Sherman tanks cranked out by the US.

After the war, most Panthers became scrap metal.

So, even finding a Panther today, is next to impossible.

Jacques' Panther quest began thousands of miles

from his home, and stretches back to a tough, grim war.

Poland, January 1945, German and Soviet forces

were locked in a death struggle.

(explosions)

Knocked out in battle, a 45 ton Panther

sinks to the bottom of the Black Nida River.

The sunken treasure remains there for over 40 years,

waiting for a second chance.

And, this Panther is lucky enough to get it.

- [Jacques] I bought it from a German collector,

and he'd had it for about 10 years.

He'd purchased it from a fellow in Poland,

who'd actually pulled it out of the river.

The hull was reasonably intact,

though destroyed in a number of places,

but the turret had been completely blown apart.

- [Dave] When the Panther was first delivered,

it was in about the sorriest condition of any vehicle

we'd ever had delivered here.

- [Keith] I thought it was unrestorable,

and if we did restore it, it'd take at least 10 years.

- [Dave] Everything that you looked at was either

cracked, rusted really heavily.

All of the hydraulic tubing was bent,

and rusted, and damaged.

- [Greg] It was almost like a dream,

you know, are we really gonna do this,

cause it's gonna commit the shop to many years of work.

When I went over to Jacques to get some sort of

reassurance from him, he said,

"Well, basically this probably the most challenging

project we'll ever have.

- [Narrator] To rebuild the Panther,

the crew live and breathe a whole range of disciplines.

- [Jacques] It's working with metal,

it's working with wood, it's working with electricity,

it's working with hydraulics, and then, on top of that,

to try to do it historically, so you're researching

the paints and the materials like that.

That adds a certain amount of complexity to it, as well.

- [Narrator] When you're rebuilding a 45 ton tank,

you're going to need some heavy duty help.

- [Jacques] You'll notice in the shop,

we have a 15 ton overhead crane,

and we have hydraulic cylinders that go up to

50, 60, and 100 tons to pull things apart.

- [Dave] So, a lot of time and effort goes

into figuring out how to remove the piece,

how to restore the piece,

without damaging the piece of equipment or us.

Oh, I had stitches here, from a grinder,

and stitches here form a piece of sheet metal,

so, I guess it adds character.

(grinding)

- [Narrator] The team is not only putting together a tank,

as they scrape off the paint,

untangle the electrical systems,

and open up sealed compartments,

they're also unraveling a mystery.

How did this tank end up at the bottom

of the Black Nida River?

Was it hit by another tank?

Or by a Soviet rocket?

Did the engine die in the heat of battle?

Did sabotage take down the mighty machine?

Jacques' team will have to salvage

every possible clue to uncover

the mysterious death of their Panther.

(garage door opening)

- [Narrator] Born and built in Germany,

shattered in Poland during World War II,

transported to what was once enemy territory,

this Panther tank is getting an extreme makeover.

This is the world's largest private collection

of military vehicles.

Jacques Littlefield's team have set themselves

a huge challenge.

A burnt out, rusted Panther tank

is going to be restored with military precision.

(grinding)

- [Dave] We try and keep the same welding

process, that was used originally.

If they used arc welding originally,

we put the pieces back together with arc welding.

And, we use the same type of rods,

the same process, and we try and make everything

look the same.

We try to replicate the width of the welds,

and the shape of the bead, and

make it look exactly the same.

(slide carousel clicking)

- [Narrator] In preparation for surgery,

the tank is stripped down and examined for

from top to bottom.

- [Jacques] We take the major pieces off,

usually the turret, the tracks,

the engine, and we evaluate what can be reused,

what has to be completely replaced,

and then, of course, what we're missing.

- [Dave] When we're cleaning out the vehicle,

on this vehicle, we sound the slide

for a World War II German handgun.

We found unused machine gun rounds,

that would have been used for the bow gun,

or the coax gun that is in the turret.

We found a flare gun cartridge.

(torch igniting)

- [Narrator] Long after this Panther's final action,

Dave found himself under fire.

- [Dave] We had vacuumed out the interior

of the vehicle, fairly extensively,

and I was using a large rosebud torch

to heat a suspension component,

up in the front corner, and I put the torch

down in this area where there was still a machine gun round,

and the thing went off, and my ears were ringing,

and I thought I'd been shot.

I checked for puncture wounds,

and it was pretty scary, because you didn't know...

I didn't know it was there,

but obviously I found it with the torch.

- And I hear this, bang, you know.

It was really loud and I yelled over,

"Are you alright Dave?"

And, he didn't say anything at first.

And then, "Yeah, I'm okay, you know."

- Everyone in the shop heard it.

Rushed to the scene.

"Are you okay?"

- [Narrator] The Panther was known for its

in your face design features.

The Panther's front armor was angled,

and this gave it a deadly edge in combat.

- [Dave] The chief advantage

of sloped armor is the fact that if you take,

say like on the front of the Panther,

the glacis, they call it, the upper piece of plate,

is a little bit thicker than three inches.

When you take a three inch plate

and lay it down, that plate essentially becomes thicker,

there's a longer distance that a projectile

would have to travel through it.

And, you also have a deflection factor,

where a projectile that may hit that angled plate

may just bounce... deflect right over the vehicle.

- [Narrator] The Panther's sloped armor

was copied directly from the enemy,

from the Russian T34.

- [Jacques] Prior to the invasion

of Russia in June of 1941, a German tank design

tended to be, as many other countries did,

basically with vertical sides,

basically a block design,

and once the German's saw the Russian tank,

they realized instantly that this was a superior design,

and I think it was a real shock to them.

(welding)

- [Narrator] This Panther isn't

giving the restoration crew any breaks.

After one world war, and decades immersed in a river,

the turret is too far gone to be saved.

But the damage yields tantalizing clues

about the Panther's final moments.

- [Greg] When the tank arrived, of course,

the turret was severed.

And, it was obviously fractured

and blown apart by an explosion.

That was the first apparent thing we found.

(airplanes passing)

(explosion)

- The entire top plate, armor plate

was warped real heavily, we think,

from the explosion, and then,

we had a piece of armor on the left side

that is about 5/8 thick that was completely shattered.

- [Narrator] So, the panther took a savage hit,

strong enough to shatter heavy armor plate and

push back the tank's firewall, with the engine attached.

Where did that explosion come from?

(explosion)

Another tank?

A mine?

A rocket at close range?

As the crew rebuilds their Panther,

it's possible all the answers they're seeking

could remain submerged forever,

beneath the surface of the Black Nida River.

- [Narrator] Under the California sun,

and in the English countryside,

two tank crews are bringing

German Panthers back to life.

Brian and Alan Rudder work at

the Kevin Wheatcroft collection,

one of the biggest in the world.

In a tank workshop, sometimes just unscrewing

a rusted nut and bolt can turn into a major headache.

- You should be able to rotate this

to get to the anchor bolts at the back,

that hold the whole assembly,

the backing plate on,

and you can't get not them, because it's corroded,

solid.

- [Kevin] Panther tank's been in the workshop now,

for something like four years.

Although we've worked on it for

about two and a half.

Took a year just to take it apart.

This thing had stood for 50 years in a

French scrapyard.

It's one of those things I wanted as a child.

I saw the pictures in the comics

and in the war films, and I wanted one.

- No, that still won't start on it.

- Once we get that all out and done,

I mean get the drum off, we'll have to pull it

out that way, out the hole.

Hang it on there.

It's quite a heavy thing.

(laughs)

The end plug's gone, which is a shame,

but the other pugs are still in,

so there's a good chance of it being reasonable condition.

- [Narrator] Heating up the metal

can help loosen parts that have been

locked in place for decades.

If that fails, there's always the last resort,

cut the piece off.

(hammering)

- We don't like cutting stuff, it's the last resort.

You can persevere just so long,

and then what you have to do, admit defeat.

- I'll get the forklift and lift it straight out.

Or do you want to hand roll it out?

- Like that.

That was what...

That there was attached to the mechanism here.

There's a circuit that goes on there,

and you're supposed to take the circuit off

through one of those windows,

And, when you pull this whole assembly off,

that's supposed to slide off of here.

But, that's just corroded solid.

I was warming it, trying it, but

in the end...

last resort.

- [Kevin] It's been a lot of heartache,

but great fun.

It's a mixture of sort of archeology,

and mechanics, and just the joy of seeing

something come back to life again.

- [Narrator] In combat, the Panther was feared

for many reasons.

Ferociously accurate, the Panther's gun is

considered by many to be the best of the second World War.

This gun fired 75 millimeter rounds,

and could take out enemy tanks at 3000 yards.

If an American Sherman ever came face to face

with a Panther, it was no contest.

- At the shop here, we have a lot of tourists come through,

we have tankers that were in World War II

come up and tell some of the horror stories

about being in a Sherman tank getting shot at.

Some of them come up and just look at

the Panther now, and just tremble,

looking at that gun, because they're still scared of it.

- [Narrator] The Panther's barrel was

more than twice as long as the Sherman's,

and this gave it a much higher muzzle velocity.

- [Jacques] That was the primary advantage the gun had.

It had a velocity in excess of 3000 feet per second,

depending on the kind of ammunition you were using.

At the time, the Sherman tank was

on the order of 2000 feet per second.

(guns firing)

The velocity sort of determined both your accuracy

and how much armor you can go through,

how much energy you can deliver to the target.

- [Dave] A Sherman tank had

a similar sized gun, but a lower velocity weapon.

And, the Sherman didn't have the ability to

penetrate any part of the Panther,

but he Panther gun had the ability to penetrate,

basically any section of the Sherman,

because of the higher velocity of the main gun.

It was a one shot, one kill kind of an affair.

You know, a Panther versus a Sherman.

- [Narrator] One of the toughest challenges

for the crew, is the Panther's turret.

It's one of the most complex pieces on the

most complex tank, of it's day.

- This turret is so badly shattered,

it's had so many shoddy repair attempts,

that we determined that it would just be better

to start over with new material.

Somebody's attempted to weld these cracks up with

the wrong welding rod, which you can see,

it then cracked again.

If it was less damaged, we would attempt to repair

the original pieces, but this was so far gone,

that we determined that we would just

reuse the mantlet casting and casting for the ventilator

and basically start over from scratch.

- [Narrator] While the crew rebuilds their Panther,

a mystery hangs over them.

How did their Panther end up at the bottom

of a river in Poland?

The tank isn't talking, but it has left behind

a kind of finger print.

Stamped into the hull, are serial numbers.

They're still legible.

Which means, German tank records might hold a clue.

(march music and footsteps)

The military archives show Jacques' Panther

was originally issued to the 16th Panzer regiment

in July, 1944.

Six months later, the regiment was decimated

on the Russian front.

The records don't reveal how the Panther

went down to defeat,

but they do lead us to the Panther's

original base, in Bergen.

Today, it's home to the ultra-modern Leopard II.

With its sloped front, advanced armor,

and powerful gun, the Leopard is,

in many ways, the modern descendant of the Panther.

(gun firing and explosions)

The Leopard's gun is made by the same company

that made the Panther's gun.

Firing 120 millimeter rounds,

the Leopard can knock out a target

two and a half miles away.

(gun firing)

- [Narrator] The Leopard's gun,

is considered to be the best on the battlefield,

and the American Army agrees.

Former enemies, now use the same German made gun

on their tanks.

(tank engines driving past)

(gun fires)

Modern tank crews take for granted

that they can fire accurately on the move.

The Panther could fire while in motion,

but it probably wouldn't be able to hit its target.

During the second World War,

American engineers tried to achieve gun stabilization,

with electric gyroscopes mounted in the turret.

The German approach was completely different.

They tried to stabilize the entire tank,

with a highly complex torsion bar suspension.

This created 20 inches of suspension travel.

In other words, a very smooth ride,

that was years ahead of its time.

- [Dave] I've seen film footage

of Panther's in motion, both on the terrain

and on the test track that has specific bumps,

and you can see that the hull basically

remains about level, and the suspension moves rapidly

up and down, compensating for those bumps.

The contemporaries, like a Sherman or a T34,

they have very limited suspension travel,

and they are a very stiff, rough riding vehicle.

It was fairly fatiguing for the crew.

- [Narrator] At Jacques' shop,

it's time to start work on the Panther's

12 cylinder, 700 horsepower engine.

Engines are Keith Boles' area of specialty.

- [Keith] Well, our Panther engine being sleeved,

the cylinder walls are not cast into the block.

They slip out.

A sleeved engine is like a diesel engine,

you take the sleeve out and you put a new sleeve in.

But you can't buy a Maybach sleeve for a Panther engine.

We have to have them made.

- [Narrator] Lightweight and powerful,

Maybach engines were originally designed to power aircraft.

This created serious problems for the Panther.

- [Keith] The engine and the engine block itself,

it was really needlessly light and fragile

versus what it could have been.

- [Dave] We have pictures of failures

where they had connecting rod failures,

and they had head gasket problems,

because they had tried to keep the weight

of the components so light.

- [Narrator] Early versions of the engine,

came with a serious design flaw.

(explosion)

- The Panthers were always gasoline powered,

and whenever you have gasoline,

if the engine isn't tuned properly,

if the ignition timing isn't right,

it's possible to get what they call

a stack fire, where it will spit through the carburetor,

and the problem with gasoline is that

it's also very explosive in confined area,

and that fire can very quickly move

into the crew compartment.

- [Narrator] The factory that built

the Panther engine is gone, but the company remains.

Today, MTU builds state of the art engines

for the German Army's Leopard II tanks.

The Leopards thrive on MTU's 1500 horsepower engines.

(engine starts up and runs)

Weighing over 61 tons, the Leopards

can reach a road speed of 45 miles per hour.

Unlike the Panther, they burn diesel,

which give greater mileage and

is less combustible than gasoline.

Michael Groddeck is a senior technical director at MTU.

- Our main challenge is always to get

the most compact diesel engines which are achievable.

If we make an engine or compression system

much more compact, immediately,

the saved volume and weight will be used

for additional equipment,

maybe a bigger gun, maybe more fuel,

maybe more ammunition, maybe a stronger armor

protection, to protect the tank against

mines and things like that.

- [Narrator] Unlike their modern counterparts,

the Panthers burned gasoline,

a highly flammable fuel, and a deadly factor

in a confined space.

(explosion)

Could a fire have taken out Jacques Littlefield's Panther?

- [Dave] You know, originally we thought

there had been a fire inside the vehicle,

but on the Panther, they use wooden blocks

that are machined, to hold the main gun rounds.

And, that wood was still intact.

And also, a large portion of the original wiring

for the vehicle, the insulation was still intact,

which would imply, because of the wood was never burned

and wiring was still in place,

that there had been an explosion,

but actually no fire.

- [Narrator] If the Panther didn't succumb to fire,

what else could have destroyed such a powerful machine?

(drums)

- [Narrator] Jacques Littlefield's crew,

in California, is bringing a demolished Panther tank

back to life.

They've spent over three years on this project.

Dave Marian has redesigned the shattered turret,

which is being rebuilt, offsite.

When completed, the refurbished turret

will fit into the turret ring.

- Turned out pretty good.

- [Dave] Does that look pretty centered?

- Yeah.

- [Jacques] Fortunately we were able to

find one in France that a collector had

that was, I don't know if it was brand new,

but it was in very good shape,

and the one, of course, that we had

was both damaged and very badly rusted,

and while you can always rebuild something

like that, that would have been

quite expensive to do.

- [Narrator] With the turret ring in place,

next up is the Panther's turret basket.

Greg Taylor has been rebuilding the crew seats.

- The German armored vehicles all had

a standard seat frame.

We have one good original seat that we've

removed from the 222 armored car.

We were able to copy that.

What I did is I made a fixture

for the original seat, that I could weld up,

and we had a bunch of parts made of tubing

that we could weld together to make replica seats.

That's a start.

- Damn, that is tight.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, but it works.

German precision.

- [Narrator] Advanced armor, a powerful gun,

an unmatched suspension, all made the Panther

a masterpiece of war, and that wasn't all.

It had an extra gear mechanism

which enabled it to engage in neutral steer.

This allowed the Panther's track

to move in opposite directions at the same time.

- [Dave] The neutral steer in the Panther,

it gives you more maneuverability at low speeds,

so it can almost, kind of pivot in position.

And so, all modern vehicles are like that now.

The Panther, I guess, was one of the first

vehicles to have neutral steer capability,

but the US didn't have that until much later.

- [Announcer] For modern tanks,

like the Leopard II and M1 Abrams,

the Panther's neutral steer legacy is essential.

In tank warfare, seconds with your back

to the enemy, could prove fatal.

- [Moises] Neutral steering means

is that you have the ability to turn in place 360 degrees.

And, in tight spots, specifically in urban areas,

where you don't have the ability

to go around the corner, turn, and come back,

or to do a U-turn, the gun stays on the target,

while the tank is maneuvering out.

- [Narrator] With the turret ring installed,

the crew deals with the Panther's final drives.

Final drives are gears that transfer power

from the transmission to the drive sprockets.

But, on the Panther, these gears have a serious flaw.

- If you look at the actual choice of gears

they used, they used basically straight screw gears.

They used three gears, involved a double reduction system,

and straight screw gears, and there's a lot of stress

on just one gear tooth, when you do that.

If you compare that with, for instance,

what was used on the Sherman tank,

we see basically a set of double herringbone gears

with more teeth and more surface area,

really the Sherman gears were a better design

and a better choice.

- [Narrator] The flaw with the Panther's

final drives was compounded by the fact that

they were designed for a much lighter tank.

- The final weight of a Panther is about 45 tons,

and they were intended for a vehicle that

weighed between 32 and 35 tons.

The vehicle continued to get heavier and heavier

and heavier as they added more armor,

added more components that made it heavy.

A common problem in military equipment is that

you start out with a component

like a final drive that was intended for one weight range

and it gets heavier and heavier and heavier,

and then the final drive is a weak point.

- [Announcer] To avoid stripping the gears,

Panther drivers were ordered to operate at reduced speeds.

As a result, the Panther could never reach

its full combat potential.

And, when the tank broke down on the battlefield,

the crew was virtually paralyzed

by the Panther's complex design.

- On the Panther, specifically,

if you were to have, say a transmission failure,

or a final drive failure, it would take days

to get down to the final drives,

because everything, like the driver's seat,

all the controls, all that stuff has to be removed

before you can get actually to the final drive.

The wheels on the Panther are interleaved

and, you know, so to get to one inner wheel,

you have to take several of the outer wheels off,

in layers, to get to that one damaged wheel.

- [Jacques] And then, you had both sets

of torsion bars to worry about.

They did have access holes, so you could get to them

from either side, but you often had to go

to the other side of the tank to have access

to push or pull a bar, which meant you had to take off the

track and the wheels on the other side of the tank.

- [Narrator] The German army fought the war

relatively close to home ground.

The Americans were fighting an ocean away.

So, American engineers came up with

a time and life saving concept,

rapid field repair.

- [Jacques] To remove the transmission

on the Panther, requires a big crane

and disassembling quite a bit of stuff inside.

To remove the transmission on a Sherman,

for instance, the entire front end comes off,

so the transmission and the final drives

can come out, really, quite easily,

and be put back very easily.

So, that would really effect your ability to,

if you had damage in the front end,

to repair that tank, in the field.

- [Announcer] With lessons learned,

on the battlefield, rapid field repair

is an integral component of modern tank design.

Modern propulsion units, like MTU's power pack,

for the German Leopard II tank, are self contained.

These power packs house the engine,

final drives, and transmission all in one unit.

Changing engines is literally plug and play.

Each day, the crew gets the Panther

a little more functional.

But they're still no closer to finding out

what destroyed their tank, over 60 years ago.

They know some kind of explosion was involved.

Was it sabotage?

As the war progressed, German production relied

more and more on forced labor.

Millions of prisoners were forced to work

in German factories.

Some would protest through acts of sabotage.

During their Panther restoration,

Alan and Brian grapple with the final drives.

But, something doesn't make sense.

- The bolts are loose.

They've not been tightened up.

All the bolts are loose on that cover.

Whoever did it, hadn't done a very good job.

- We found all sorts of things,

from cigarette butts pushed into oil gullies,

holes drilled into oil gullies, to lose oil pressure,

brake components manufactured in the wrong fashion,

so that they weren't as useful as they should have been.

All manner of things, just to slow the war machine up.

- [Narrator] Were the final drives on Jacques Panther

damaged in an act of sabotage?

- I've heard stories, and even talked to people who

had worked in these factories, whom talked about,

you know, knocking off a gear tooth and then

kind of gluing it back on.

We haven't seen anything like that,

that I can point to.

- [Narrator] Sabotage is ruled out,

but that just raises more questions.

In the final months of the war,

on the bleak Russian front,

something, somehow, took down this Panther.

- [Narrator] In Portola Valley, California,

Jacques Littlefield's restoration crew is

fitting their Panther tank with anew turret.

Even without the gun, the massive turret

still weighs over 15000 pounds.

There's no margin for error.

- [Jacques] There's very small clearances

between the bottom of the turret and the top of the deck,

as the turret turns, it could interfere

with the drivers hatches or the engine hatches,

and you're talking, you know,

a third of an inch in some cases,

so, you had to get everything right,

and of course, if the turret doesn't turn exactly

round the basket that hangs underneath it

will be obround, and it won't track properly either.

- [Narrator] They've been waiting

three months for this day.

The fit has to be perfect.

- [Kevin] Watch your head.

- I'll get it, I'll get it.

- [Dave] Center it front to back,

and then I'll move it over to the left.

- [Kevin] The boss is on the gear box.

- [Keith] Okay, come down a little bit.

- [Kevin] Probably gonna have to shift that way

a little bit more, just a tiny bit, there you go.

You gotta kinda watch the back too, Kieth.

- [Kieth] Come, come down, slow.

Come down slow.

How does it look over there, Greg?

Hold it, hold, hold it.

Come back up a little bit.

- [Dave] Up? - [Kieth] Up, up.

- It's hitting on the back,

on the back corner, Kieth.

- [Kieth] Yeah, it need to go forward.

- Forward, yeah.

- [Kieth] Did that go down that time?

- How does it look over there?

I think your down.

- You think it down?

- [Kieth] Yeah, I think so.

- Okay.

- Looks good from here.

- Okay, I'm turning.

It turns.

- [Narrator] After three long years,

Jacques' crew has victory in its sights.

Now, it's down to the final details.

- [Greg] After all, when you're working on things

like seats and radios, it shows you've come a long way.

You're not banging away on rusty chunks of iron and rust.

We're past that point, pretty much.

- [Narrator] And as the Panther nears completion,

the story of her death can finally be dredged up

from then past.

The Black Nida River flows past the Polish village of

Bieleckie Mills.

Jacques' Panther spent over 40 years submerged

beneath these waters.

Heinrick Brawlitz was there, that day in 1990,

when the broken Panther was dragged out of the river.

Edvard Trzcinski was a terrified 16 year old witness

the day the tank was destroyed.

Both men can now open a window

on the final moments of Jacques Littlefield's Panther.

January, 1945 in the dying months

of the second World War,

the Soviet army was pounding the Germans into submission.

(explosion)

The battle, around the village of Bieleckie Mills

was ferocious and unforgiving.

(gunfire and explosions)

(airplane flying over)

- [Narrator] Under fire, from fighter bombers,

the Panther tries to escape across the frozen river.

In many sections, the river runs three feet deep,

but the crew makes a fatal mistake.

They try to take their 45 ton tank

across a section of the river that is

much deeper than they realize.

- [Narrator] Trapped and soon to be overwhelmed

by the enemy, the Panther's crew followed

standard military procedure.

- The standard procedure with any army is

that if you abandon a tank

that's otherwise operational,

the enemy might capture it,

is there is a procedure setting charges.

(explosion)

- [Narrator] The source of the mysterious explosion

that destroyed the turret is finally known.

- [Jacques] There was a charge set in the turret,

cause the turret was completely blown apart.

I suspect, from looking at the way the rust,

and the other damage patterns are,

that perhaps it sank down as far as the top of the hull,

so that when the explosion went off,

it blew the turret apart, but did not do

lot's of other damage, even to some of

the thinner pieces of sheet metal inside.

- [Narrator] The mystery of the Littlefield

Panther has been solved.

But, completing this mechanical puzzle,

requires cooperation.

Jacques Littlefield and Dave Marian

have crossed the Atlantic to meet up with

Kevin Wheatcroft and Alan and Brian Rudder.

Both crews have spent years restoring their Panthers.

And, throughout the journey, they have helped

each other get closer to fulfilling their dream.

- [Kevin] Jacques Littlefield is

obviously a renowned collector.

He's a great guy to get along with.

He's very helpful, very free with information.

We've shared a lot of parts,

and a lot of knowledge between

his mechanics and our mechanics.

- [Jacques] That's really worked out

very very nicely.

It saves us a lot of time and effort,

and because his mechanics were the farthest ahead,

they were the ones we would call

when we had a problem, "How did you take this apart?",

"How did you take that apart?", "What did you do

for this?", and, of course, they had all the answers.

- [Narrator] With both teams helping each other,

completion of the Panthers is within range.

Jacques crew is almost ready to celebrate.

- [Keith] When I get this engine

put back together, and we first fire it up,

and it runs great, it starts instantly,

it's gonna be a day to party.

- Well, I'll tell you what, if there's any alcohol around,

I'll probably have a drink.

(laughs)

- It'll be pretty special day,

probably cry.

(laughs)

- Anything else, after this would be

kinda like child's play, I think.

You're taking a complicated vehicle anyway

and trying to just make something out of nothing, basically.

- [Narrator] The Panther, born in Germany,

destroyed in Poland, now reincarnated in California.

For die hard collectors in peace time,

a restored Panther is a dream come true.

(explosion)

But once upon a war,

coming face to face with this tank was a

nightmare you'd never forget.

(title song)