A question that’s been bugging me for half a century and I’ve never gotten an answer for it.
Being that the Germans were so strict and proper in names and numbering, why do Panther Ausf. run D, A, G, F? Why don’t they run A, B, C, D? 
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This is one of those whats the magic number of the universe questions … its been speculated over for years and years mate …
Some say disinformation to fool the Russians, some say it was an engineer cock up and it should of been A then D but they got it mixed up, some say the prototypes were A, then production went to D then back to A and then you throw the G into the equation and its time to give up worrying lol …
Bottom line … no one knows, and probably never will.
Its definitely one of my questions when time travel is invented …
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Some food for thought…
H.P.
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yeap … no … clear as mud … still no one knows… 
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No idea.
Conversation with the mustached honcho going like this…
D = Deutschland
“Ja!, that sounds good. Produce it.”
A = Adolf
“Oh, that’s better. It will ignite the morale of the soldaten. Produce it.”
G = Grossdeutschland Greater Germany
“Oh, that’s perfect. It will ignite the morale of the soldaten, in defending der fatherland in these fateful days. Produce it.”
On a more serious note of conjecture, the English word Design and German word are the same. Given the pressure of development one could imagine the words Panther Design, status of the Panther Design or simply The Design were often used and morphed into Panther ausf D during the process.
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Frenchy’s thread is interesting as it kicks around the various theories. My guess is the D’s debut performance at Kursk was so bad reliability-wise, those in charge had an option with the significantly modified new version to distance it from the unpopular (with crews) D by giving it a new big cat name…lion - Löwe? (hmm was any German AFV was so named?) For whatever reason they didn’t change the name, so rather than calling it an E they called it an A because it was literally back to the drawing-board.
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And of course the first production Tiger was an Ausf. E (Sd.Kfz.181), superceded by Pz.Kpfw. VI Ausf. B aka “Königstiger”(Sd.Kfz.182) 
At least the Pz.Kpfw. III and the Pz.Kpfw. IV stayed more or less alphabetical from A to N and A to J respectively, although they never got a Feline name.
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Cat names for the earlier tanks wouldn’t have been too impressive…stuff like
Pz I - House cat
Pz II - Alley cat
Pz III - Ocelot
Pz IV - Serval
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My recent foray into German armor is finding me blurry eyed and drooling at the end of the day. Things like this won’t help.
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There was a Löwe in design plans but it was dropped in favour of the Maus
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The Lowe (Lion):
Fantastic kit. It’s built and on my shelf.
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