Entwicklung Series

Entwicklung Series

The Entwicklung series, more commonly known as the E-series, was a late-World War II attempt by Germany to produce a standardised series of tank designs. There were to be standard designs in six different weight classes, from which several specialised variants were to be developed. This was necessitated by the extremely complex tank designs that had resulted in poor production rates and mechanical unreliability.

The E-series designs were simpler, cheaper to produce and more efficient than their predecessors, however their design involved only modest improvements in armour and firepower over the designs they were intended to replace, such as the Hetzer, Panther G or Tiger II - indeed, most of the lighter E-series vehicles were intended to use what were essentially the Tiger II's steel-rimmed road wheels for their suspension and were meant to overlap each other as on the Tiger II - and would represent the final standardisation of German armoured vehicle design where the American M26 Pershing, the British Centurion Mk 3 and Soviet T-44 tanks, which would have been the Entwicklung series' contemporaries and likely opponents.