Does anyone know which nations Leopard tanks play the Panther in “A bridge too far”?
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Internet says Dutch Leo’s were used
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It was a Leopard 1NL with some plating added, as well as other stuff like Panzer IV spare tracks and an MG 34. You can tell fairly easily by the tool stowage boxes along the hull sides: at the time the movie was made, only Dutch Leopards had those. Also the four ⊃-shaped fittings on the right of the mantlet, above the gunner’s telescope, which are for the Dutch fire simulation system, and the rectangular antenna tuning boxes on the rear turret roof. If you’re really hardcore, you can also tell from the fire extinguishers being contained in zippered bags 
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You’d have thought that in 1977 they could have made a bit more effort on the enemy kit wouldn’t you?
I mean, there was a precedent for actually bothering about the appearance of tanks and the like: Kelly’s Heroes in 1970 and their fairly decent Tiger, and even back in 1967, in The Night of the Generals, they’d bothered with again, some Tigers. I think in fact, that the latter was the first film where they had bothered to try and make something look German, as opposed to using say, M41 and M48s.
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It all comes down to how much they were permitted to do by the NL army.
They had Carte Blanche on the Tiger for Kelly’s Heroes and real Shermans at their disposal. I think that the ‘Panther’ was fairly credible for background props. Some of the other vehicles were credible for what they could do to:
Don’t forget the plastic Shermans on Land Rover’s too.
Some were later used in the movie ‘Cuba’:
… and yes, some were probably not a good idea for close ups… Like the 222 on the 51 Dodge chassis:
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I recall reading (a very long time ago) an M-10 TD used in the movie “Cuba” was the real thing but had a plastic main gun (removed due to a demil rule).
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Actually found the info in issue #25 (1979) of After the Battle magazine. The M-10 used in “Cuba” had recently been recovered in a junk yard in the UK. My time line was a bit off, it was used with the drainpipe barrel in the tv series “Eisenhower the War Years”, but the original barrel had been welded back together prior to the filming of “Cuba”.
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That looks like a 17-pounder M10, either with the muzzle brake cut off (not just removed) or a fake gun barrel instead of the real one.
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