GT 102
While work on the GT 101 continued, Müller proposed another way to build the free-turbine engine that avoided the problems with his original designs. In December 1944 he presented his plans, which were accepted for development as the GT 102.
The basic idea of the GT 102 was to completely separate the power turbine from the engine itself, using the latter as a gas generator. The core engine was run hot enough to power itself and nothing more, no power was taken from the core to drive the tank. Compressed air from the core's compressor, 30% of the overall airflow, was bled off through a pipe to a completely separate two-stage turbine with its own combustion chamber. This avoided the overspeed problems of the original design; when load was removed, simply shutting off the airflow to the turbine would slow it down. This also meant that the core could be run at full speed while the power turbine ran at low speed, providing significantly improved low-speed torque. The only downside to the design was that the power turbine no longer had the huge spinning mass of the GT 101, and thus did not offer any significant flywheel energy storage.
Since the turbine section of the core engine was no longer being fed all of the air from the compressor, it could be built smaller than in the GT 101. This made the engine shorter overall, allowing it to be installed transversely in the upper portion of the Panther's engine compartment, in the wider area above the tracks. The power turbine was then fit into the empty space below, mounted at a right angle to the engine. This positioned it in-line with the normal transmission, which was located at the front of the vehicle, driving it via a power shaft. The mounting was considerably more practical than the GT 101, and entirely "under armor" as well. Although the GT 102 had fuel economy about equal to the GT 101, the mounting left considerably more empty room within the engine compartment in the space formerly used by the engine cooling system that could be used for new fuel cells, doubling the overall fuel capacity to 1,400 liters and thus providing equal range to the original gasoline engine.
Most of the design work for the GT 102 was compete by early 1945, and the plans were to have been delivered on 15 February (along with final designs for the GT 101). It appears the plans were not delivered, likely due to the deteriorating war condition.
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