Did late Panther A turret have pistol ports? At what point during the run did the practice of drilling out turret side and rear for pistol ports stop?

Hi Chuck,

I'm no expert but do have a keen interest in German tanks of WW2 and my understanding is that they were only present in the Ausf D and am pretty positive they were not on the Late Ausf A.

Hi Chuck,
AFAIK, late Panther Ausf.A has eliminated all its pistol ports on the turret. Here is a reference for trivial changes on different models.

You can see that starting from January, 1944 the pistol ports on the turret side have been deleted（K-7）while the rain cover for the last production with pistol ports has been eliminated on the December production(K-5).
This also applies to the pistol port on the turret rear. They are no longer present on vehicles produced from January, 1944

Hopefully it may help you

I think the communication hatch on the left side of the turret was only present in D. But at least some As had pistol ports based on photograph.

Dragon's 6168 Late Panther A has pistol ports, but their premium late Panther A doesn't. I prefer pistol ports. So I am thinking of using the turret shell from 6168 with the premium kit.

But I like to use the much nice mantlet with good casting texture in the premium kit, but it has only monocular gun sight optics aperture. I believe the switch from binocular to monocular sight aperture also happened during A production run. So I want to know if any Panther A had monocular gun sight and pistol ports.