At least that’s what I naively thought before I began writing American Rifle: A Biography. As it happens, there are very sound reasons, rooted in its foundation in 1871, for the NRA’s emphasis on rifles.

Consider the year. 1871. Just six years before, the most lethal war in American history, the Civil, had finally ended, leaving roughly 620,000 combatants dead and numberless legions maimed, traumatized, and shocked. Half the country was a morgue, the other, a madhouse.

This (still-)astounding death tallies, as well as the grieving of millions of mothers and widows, caused Americans to swear never again, no more Antietams, no Gettysburgs. While few believed that men would war no more, many dreamed that when battle was joined the slaughter could at least be controlled. Soldiers would die, of course, just nowhere near as many, and the violence would be confined strictly to the battlefield, not visited on civilians. As World Wars One and Two would starkly demonstrate, this was a fantasy, but there could be no gainsaying the appeal of such sentiments at the time.

There was not, by the way, even the slightest hint of soft-headed pacifism about the desire to ratchet down bodycounts. In fact, among proponents could be counted hardbitten veterans and hardheaded military experts alike. Unlike those who tended to romanticise war, these individuals had seen battle up unpleasantly close. Not least among them was William Conant Church, editor of the Army and Navy Journal, who was sure he knew what had gone wrong during the war.

He ascribed the bloodletting to the popularity of firepower among generals. To them, volume of fire — or the ability to send vast numbers of shells, bullets and other pieces of metal hurtling toward the enemy — was the creed that won battles. Church felt, however, that such thinking was extravagantly wasteful in lives and ammunition, and also indicated a distinct lack of discipline.

To him, what counted was accuracy: Soldiers needed to learn how to hit their targets with the minimum number of bullets. This wasn’t just about being able to hit a bullseye at 300 yards with a rifle. Such marksmanship went hand-in-hand with other typically American virtues. Good shots required coolness under fire; steely self-discipline; familiarity with such high-tech implements as telescopic sights, windage indicators, and ballistic instruments; a determination to improve themselves by constant training; and independence of thought and action. In Europe, where the ideology of mass-firepower had long held sway, soldiers were still treated as dull, disposable automatons and subjected to fearsome discipline to flog out any remnants of individual initiative. Civil War generals had fallen beneath the European spell; Church wanted to “re-Americanize” warfare.

It’s telling to remember exactly how incompetent were many recruits at target shooting before and during the Civil War — a relic of the Musket Age, when guns were inherently inaccurate. Thus, in the 1850s, one soldier recalled, marksmanship was given such short shrift by the army that he was taken out to the rifle range only twice in five months, while the colonel commanding Fort Laramie bragged that he hoped about half his troops might one day “become expert enough to shoot at a crowd” using their rifles. During the War, Captain George W. Wingate discovered that most of his New York company couldn’t hit even a barrel lid at 100 yards.

By improving the men’s shooting skills, thought Church and his allies, fighting would be made safe, humane, and short. No more would wars drag excruciatingly on for years. No more would battles climax in horrific, wanton frontal assaults against entrenched troops. No more would there be endless sieges punctuated by titanic artillery bombardments. Instead, elite teams of sharpshooters (itself a Civil War term) based far behind the front lines would aim at officers’ heads with their rifles, kill them with a single shot at 1,000 yards or more, and thus bring the battle to a halt.

In a eerie echo of today’s technology evangelists sitting thousands of miles away and guiding precision missiles to their targets using just a joystick, Church was certain that victory would henceforth go to the sure of eye and the steady of hand, not to those who relied on brute force and blunt firepower.

In 1871 Church and Wingate would together found the NRA to propagate and popularize their principles among civilians and soldiers. They were so successful in persuading the army to overcome its previous suspicion of target practice that by the early 1880s the Chief of Ordnance could exultantly inform the Secretary of War that he had at his disposal “an army of marksmen.”

The United States Army had become, shot for shot and man for man, the deadliest force on earth — an enviable ranking it retains. Marksmanship was the military’s watchword and the Holy Grail of civilian shooters. The rifle, not just any old gun, was their weapon of choice.

And that’s why the NRA is called the National Rifle Association.

©2008 Alexander Rose

Author Bio

Born in the United States, Alexander Rose was raised in Australia and Britain. A military historian and former journalist, he is the author of Washington’s Spies: The Story of America’s First Spy Ring, and his writing has appeared in the New York Observer, the Washington Post, Studies in Intelligence, and many other publications.

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I am asked quite often about automation tools that I use so I chose to put it in writing so I may make reference to this post when anyone asks. I’ll keep the post updated as I change, add or remove tools. And I’m going to be very honest about my viewpoints on the tools. I will list them alphabetically.

Amember – Amember is a membership management program for membership sites. Amember is one of the finest out there. It is a bit complex to get setup and working but once it is, it works very well. It can integrate with almost anything. It has got a built in an affiliate marketing programme but in every case where i have used it I have integrated it with iDevAffiliate. Just because I use one central affiliate center as much as practical.

Animoto – Animoto can take still photos and turn them into awesome and incredible videos. When i need to throw together a fast video and do not feel a bit like sitting down in front of last cut and revising a video this is where I go.

Article Video Robot – Like animoto, Article Video Robot creates videos for you. But Article Video Robot creates videos from your article content. It isn’t quite as simple as just pasting in your article but it is pretty easy. Expect to spend five to ten minutes creating a video for each article. But when you are done you have got your article in video format ready to be submitted to the video sites.

Aweber – Aweber is an email autoresponder service. Aweber is tied for my 1 choice together with getresponse. I have accounts both places and love them both. They each work a little differently but achieve the same goal in the end. If you’re looking for a good auto-responder I’ll definitely advocate Aweber.

Bookmark Generation – Bookmark Generation is a service that borders on the edge of being black hat. If you’ve ever heard about Howie Schwartz then you know he borders and crosses over into the black hat of marketing with some of his tools. That’s just a caution. Bookmark Generation is an automatic bookmarking tool where you supply the list of bookmarks and bookmark generation will bookmark them over a period of time so they appear to be they’re being submitted naturally. Very forceful tool for making back links.

Butterfly marketing Script – When you purchase butterfly marketing from mike filsaime he gives you a membership script called the butterfly promoting script. If you are familliar with the concepts that are taught in butterfly selling you understand how tough it is to manually do all of the jobs. The butterfly selling script makes it simple to manage. setup of the script isn’t incredibly simple and may be overly tough for a non experienced web person. It is an awesome script if you are web savvy. I’ve only one site using this script at current, i have been using quick Action Profits script more as it is simpler to setup and does essentially a similar thing. But if you can get this script it’s a good one.

acute auto-responder – This is another autoresponder program like Aweber and GetResponse. I would not endorse using this service over the other 2 as it is not as sophisticated. I only use this auto responder when i have an e-mail list that I can’t say I have double opt’d-in. I import and send an email to a capture page to get them to opt-in. Very rare I ever basically use this one.

FirePow – I have over 150 blogs out there and FirePow is what manages them all. If you are blogging then you want to have FirePow. It can install a new blog in seconds, keep the blog software and add-ons all updated. It can manage your posts, pages, etc . It can social bookmark your posts, it’s got a built in content creator called content blitz that will load up content automatically to be shown from a variety number| range} of sources. It has it’s own high PR blog network that allows you to push your blog and plenty of other promotional tools and features as well . I won’t do it justice here. You actually need to visit it and try it. There isn’t any way I could manage my huge network of blogs without it.

GetResponse – GetResponse is another auto responder service like Aweber. Both are tied for my 1. both are great and I couldn’t image doing without both. I use each for different parts of my business to help keep everything seperated. Hi can highly recommend GetResponse as an autoresponder service.

IDevAffiliate – iDevAffiliate is software that help me manage my affiliates. A number of the membership programs I use have inbuilt affiliate management systems already but where I am able to I try to use iDevAffiliate. Why you may ask would I pay for one when I can get them for free in the other software. Well, lots of reasons but here are merely a couple. One ) iDevAffiliate has awesome tools for both me and my affiliates. My affiliates can install a small customer that keeps them up to date on thier sales. In a launch they can get play by play data. It has inbuilt graphics, payment tracking, multiple levels, and so on. 2 ) I love to centralize my affiliate program if possible so that an affiliate can sell any of the products without needing to create multiple associate accounts.

quick Action Profits – quick Action Profits is a membership script that the best I’m able to compare it with is the butterfly marketing script. It is a complete membership management script which has a built in affiliate program, multiple membership levels, special access for JV partners and so much more. Amazing script. It is complex, or maybe I should say complicated not complicated. It is less complicated to setup than the butterfly selling script as well . Either this script of the butterfly marketing script will serve you well.

SENuke – This tool is at the center of my Web 2.0 marketing. SeENuke will create accounts on a substantial number of web 2.0 sites, store the password information, and so on. After you create accounts you put your article in and spin it so that SENuke can generate a completely unique copy every time it has to. It’ll then go login to web 2.0 sites like hubpages, google knol, for example. And post a new new article into every one. After you finish posting to the web 2.0 sites ( which takes a minute or two ) you then post to the social bookmarking sites all immediately and then to the RSS directories. If you’ve got a video it can post to a number of video sites also. It turns a weeks worth of work in front of the computer into roughly an hour.

This is a tool that if I didn’t have, I might potentially not still be selling. It is worthwhile’s weight in gold. There’s another similar product out there that comes from australia, I’m not going to mention it by name but stay away from it. I gave it a try for 2 months and it didn’t work fine, is complex to use and does only a little part of what SENuke does. Can you tell i truly like this product?

Traffic Geyser – Traffic Geyser is a video submission service that submits your video to many video sites with just 2 minutes of typing in of info. There is a similar site called tubemogul. But there’s really no comarison. TubeMogul is free but does not do anything close to what Traffic Geyser does. I met mike latterly at a conference and he was talking about some of what’s coming in Traffic Geyser and it is absolutely incredible. It’s no secret that video is what’s working in online marketing now and Traffic Geyser is what can make it work for you. If you go to the Traffic Geyser site there are some free videos you can watch to see what it can do for you.

TweetSpinner – TweetSpinner is another one of the twitter automation sites. There are a large amount of free sites out there too. TweetSpinner is a paid memership but has some truly cool features. I’ve got a new product coming out soon that discusses using twitter and at the center is TweetSpinner as the tool to help rule the twittershpere.

Unique A|rticle wizard| – if you are an article marketer and have never heard about Unique Article wizard you owe it to yourself to look at it. UAW is a service that respins your article before it posts it to each new article catalog. But it’s not your everyday spinner that turns out something that is unreadable. It works completely differently because a human has to respin each paragraph two times. It then takes the different adaptations of paragraphs and makes new articles out of each one. It can submit to thousands of article sites and will only submit to ones that fit your criteria so you aren’t post spam to article directory sites where your article doesn’t fit. This eliminates the duplicate content penalty.

Wishlist Member – Wishlist Member is another membership management system. Wishlist Member work completely inside wordpress. Yes RAP that we discussed above can add members to wordpress but wordpress doesn’t have a pleasant membership level control. Wishlist Member adds some awe-inspiring membership level controls including automated advancement of levels based upon time. This is what I use for my Micro-Continuity Sites. When you sign up for micro-continuity you are entered in at week 1 and every week you obtain access to the subsequent week. Wishlist member handles all this completly hands off from me. It also integrates with amember and clickbank, paypal, 2checkout and more.
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To see More information about theseTools visit Automation Tools

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The role of guns in our history is profound and historically well documented. “The right to bear arms” is embedded in our constitution and the very notion of freedom and liberty is closely associated with firearms. Guns are considered equalizers for all people. Anybody, regardless of status, size or physical power becomes a potentially formidable threat when in possession of a firearm. Given the availability and prominence of guns in our society, most people tend to scoff at the need to train in martial arts. Why spend years of time and commitment to forge our bodies, minds and spirits in the ways of the warrior when all one has to do is acquire a firearm?

People don’t realize that guns are just tools and with such powerful tools comes great responsibility. Tools used in the wrong way can become a threat to the user and to society and training is required even in the domain of guns. Legal issues, safety issues, control and effective deployment and use of these tools is critical to the existence of a safe, secure and functional society.

If training is not important then why do our elite protection agencies of society such as law enforcement groups and military forces engage so extensively in it? The prestige and reputation of various agencies is distinguished by the amount and type of training each has received. Special military forces such as army rangers and navy seals are held in higher regard than the average soldier because of their higher level of training. For the same reason FBI and Secret Service is held in higher regard and status than the average municipal police officer.

Similarities of Revat-principles and firearms

A gun is a relatively simple but sophisticated tool for firing small projectiles at high velocity to penetrate the target with a straight trajectory. In a similar fashion, Revat is an unarmed system designed to achieve similar results.

Revat trains the body to be like a firearm mechanism. The hands accelerate explosively along a straight path to the target with the centerline analogous to the barrel of a gun. The forward steps serve as the gunpowder, or charge for the projectiles, as well as being the flight path for the attacks. In addition to the hands being likened to bullets, they can also be viewed a soldiers in war. Man Sao, or the front hand, is likened to one’s perimeter defense. Wu Sao, or rear protective hand, is likened to rear defense.

The value in guns and soldiers for self-defense is actually their offensive firepower to protect targets. Similarly, in Revat, when the limbs (i.e. the hands) are sent into “battle” and hand attacks are “chained” together, an “army” is created.

The invention of guns and firearms changed the whole philosophy and approach of warfare. In Medieval times very heavy body armor was used to protect one’s targets and consequently large heavy weapons such as the claymore broadswords and heavy battle maces were used to penetrate this heavy body armor. Mass and power were the order of the day. With combatants dressed in chain mail and body armor empty hand attacks were just not practical at that time. The advent of firearms rendered bulky metal armor and chain mail obsolete as well as the use of heavy hand weapons for warfare. Rapiers, sabres and light clothing, hand held muskets and cavalry, evolved and developed. Speed and mobility became more important, and in that regard, fencing was the principle swordplay that came into being.

Ironically, because of those developments that were set into motion by firearms, modern empty hand boxing became a practical supplement and alternative means of self-defense. Straight combination hitting, falling steps and shorter upright mobile stances became the foundation for modern empty hand combat. Additionally, grappling arts have evolved with modern times and in this arena speed and mobility are also paramount.

Firearms have also continued to evolve and develop in terms of improved materials and design. Modern guns possess greater firepower and have higher capacity clips and magazines. Today’s preferred handgun of choice for most police officers are semi- automatics, as opposed to the standard six shot revolver. Similarly, modern assault rifles also have large rates of fire and high capacity magazines. These types of arms have proven the most effective on the battlefield.

Revat is designed much like today’s modern firearms. This unique art stresses great mobility with its footwork and put emphasis on rapid rate of firepower. Chain punching in Revat can be likened to a machine gun, and with its fast and flexible footwork, it simulates a mounted machine gun on a mobile turret. Additionally, much the low thrusting kicks can be likened to a pump action shotgun, with their powerful blast like effects on the mid section, thighs, knees, shins and insteps of an enemy.

Revat Training to Supplement Firearms

As previously mentioned, complete, total self-defense based entirely on firearms is not sufficient or even adequate for today’s needs.

It has been well documented that many a law enforcement officer has been disarmed by determined criminal assailants when taken by surprise in close quarters. There has been much discussion on weapon retention techniques and programs. These in fact, constitute a study of martial arts. It is also known that most savvy, veteran law enforcement officers, carry a backup smaller pistol, in the event that their primary firearm fails, or is lost to them. In similar fashion, we in the civilian world can only learn and emulate form our better trained brethren. While the average citizen may not go on daily or weekly military maneuvers, martial art training is an undervalued, misunderstood and unappreciated tool for survival.

“The preservation and protection of our health” are foundations of our very existence here in this world. It is known that the law of nature is harsh, and the so-called civilized human world is no different at its core. Just like wild nature, human predators and prey abound. In every sphere of being, it is important to know where one is and to hone our instincts and intuition; to avoid, escape and, if necessary, fight predators. Self-protection and the protection of our family, loved ones and nation are primal instincts, desires, and responsibilities of everyone. Military and law enforcement are there to supplement our self-protection needs, not the reverse. Learning the ways of the warrior are necessary skills to our survival and growth, for we are all on the “food chain” whether we are aware of it or not.

In some states of our country, it is relatively easy to legally acquire a firearm for hunting or self-protection. In fact, more states allow a concealed handgun permit for law-abiding citizens. Even in these states, where people have exercised their rights to possess firearms, it is not always practical or convenient to carry a firearm. In addition, within a radius of 10-15 feet, unless one’s firearm is deployed, it is not a useable option, and in fact, in a close encounter, it could be readily taken from and used against the owner. And not every self defense encounters legally and morally justifies the lethal, final results that firearms produce. Martial art training gives the user many greater options of control.

Similar to veteran officers and warriors, martial arts training is the “backup pistol” we all need to invest in our survival and well-being. In this regard, Revat is the perfect addition to every modern, contemporary citizen. Besides the aforementioned technical features that virtually make Revat resemble a gun, the accompanying physical and spiritual training of the programs make it the best value of this century.

The average person of modest physical talent and ability can effectively and readily employ Revat to protect and improve the quality of their lives on a daily basis. Not every martial arts style or program can truthfully make this claim. Many styles and systems require excessive physical power and ability, rendering them impractical for the average civilian.

Revat is fun, logical and trains the students on multi-levels in a short period of time. Its strengthens the body, improves the balance, and honed one’s physical, mental and spiritual abilities. Strategy and tactical skills are also taught, and these are further integrated into an understanding of philosophical and legal arenas.

Revat is based on an ingenious integration of mathematics, physics and philosophy. It continues to grow and evolve based on its scientific and Buddhist, Confucian and mainly Taoist philosophical roots.

In summary, firearms are effective self defense tools but you may need Revat training to fill the gaps in your personal safety net. Do you have your gun on you right at this moment?

We offer several classes and programs for beginners, advanced martial artists and instructors who are looking to offer new classes to their members.

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You have to know what constitutes a good formation. Many times your enemy could attack while you are trying to get your unit into formation. When you do form melee formations, you have to make sure you are within the enemy’s firing range. While this may not be a good thing for you, it is also advantageous. The key to making the best formations is to surround the enemy. This will give you maximum firepower and if you make your formation on the edge of their formation so that they will not be able to bring the full force of their firepower to bear on you.

If you are outnumbered by the enemy troops, this strategy could pose a bit of a problem, but it will enable you to have a far better ratio of kills than if you only had a shallow formation. You need to form at least a 30?formation, so that your troops are lined up in the shape of a crescent. This will do more damage to them than if they were dealing.

In a situation where the enemy positions its troops so that they are in front in order to do damage to your troops while holding them back, you can counter this with a flanking action. You can do this by engaging the troops with your melee troops, and hold back troops to walk around their flanks and attack their missiles. This strategy will give you much better results because the missile troops will die at close quarters. The strategy means taking the firepower applied and the firepower dealt into consideration. When firepower is applied to low hitpoints, you can do more damage than if you applied it to a low damage high hitpoints unit.

When you have high mixes, the best strategy to use is that of bottlenecks. Effective use of bottlenecks depends on the power and the type of attack of the units that you use. You should have your melee units surrounding the opening of the bottleneck. This way you can concentrate on a much larger surface area. Your ranged troops can also catch any troops that are caught in the bottleneck. When using melee troops, the best strategy to use is to delay their advance but at the same time beat them on with ranged attacks.

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First encountered on 23 June, 1941, the T-34 outclassed the existing Panzer III and IV. At the insistence of General Heinz Guderian, a special Panzerkommision was dispatched to the Eastern Front to assess the Soviet tanks. Among the features of the Soviet tank considered most significant were the sloping armor, which gave much improved shot deflection and also increased the effective armor thickness against penetration, the wide track, which improved mobility over soft ground, and the 76.2 mm gun, which had good armor penetration and fired an effective high-explosive round.

Daimler-Benz (DB) and Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nrnberg AG (MAN) were given the task of designing a new thirty to thirty-five-ton tank, designated VK30.02, by April 1942 (apparently in time to be shown to Hitler for his birthday). Panther on the Eastern Front, 1944. Panther Ausf. G in Houffalize, Belgium. The DB design was a direct homage to the T-34. It resembled the T-34 hull and turret form. DB’s design used a leaf spring suspension whereas the T-34 used coil springs. The DB turret was smaller than that of the MAN design and had a smaller turret ring which was the result of the narrower hull required by the leaf spring suspension which lay outside of hull. The main advantages of the leaf springs over a torsion bar suspension were a lower hull silhouette and a simpler shock damping design. Like the T34, the DB design had a rear drive sprocket. Unlike the T-34, the DB design had a three-man turret crew: commander, gunner, and loader. But as the planned L/70 75 mm gun was much longer and heavier than the T-34′s, mounting it in the Daimler-Benz turret was difficult. Plans to reduce the turret crew to two men to stem this problem were eventually dropped. The MAN design embodied more conventional German thinking with the transmission and drive sprocket in the front and a turret placed centrally on the hull. It had a gasoline engine and eight torsion-bar suspension axles per side. Because of the torsion bar suspension and the drive shaft running under the turret basket, the MAN Panther was higher and had a wider hull than the DB design. The slightly earlier, Henschel designed Tiger I heavy tank’s use of a “slack-track” Christie-style pattern of large road wheels with no return rollers for the upper run of track, and with the main road wheels being overlapping and interleaved in layout, were design concepts broadly repeated with the MAN design for the Panther. The two designs were reviewed over a period from January 1942 through March 1942. Reichminister Todt, and later, his replacement Albert Speer, both recommended the DB design to Hitler because of its several advantages over the initial MAN design. However, at the final submission, MAN improved their design, having learned from the DB proposal, and a review by a special commission appointed by Hitler in May 1942 ended up selecting the MAN design. Hitler approved this decision after reviewing it overnight. One of the principal reasons given for this decision was that the MAN design used an existing turret designed by Rheinmetall-Borsig while the DB design would have required a brand new turret to be designed and produced, substantially delaying the commencement of production. Production The MAN design also had better fording ability, easier gun servicing and higher mobility due to better suspension, wider tracks, and a bigger fuel tank. A mild steel prototype was produced by September 1942 and, after testing at Kummersdorf, was officially accepted.

It was put into immediate production. The start of production was delayed, however, mainly because there were too few specialized machine tools needed for the machining of the hull. Finished tanks were produced in December and suffered from reliability problems as a result of this haste. The demand for this tank was so high that the manufacturing was soon expanded beyond MAN to include Daimler-Benz, Maschinenfabrik Niedersachsen-Hannover (MNH) and Henschel & Sohn in Kassel. The initial production target was 250 tanks per month at MAN. This was increased to 600 per month in January 1943. Despite determined efforts, this figure was never reached due to disruption by Allied bombing, manufacturing bottlenecks, and other difficulties. Production in 1943 averaged 148 per month. In 1944, it averaged 315 a month (3,777 having been built that year), peaking with 380 in July and ending around the end of March 1945, with at least 6,000 built in total. Strength peaked on 1 September, 1944 at 2,304 tanks, but that same month a record number of 692 tanks were reported lost. Allied bombing was first directed at the common chokepoint for both Panther and Tiger production – the Maybach engine plant, which was bombed the night of April 2728, 1944. Production was shut down for five months, but a second plant had already been planned, the Auto-Union plant at Siegmar, and this came online in May 1944. Targeting of Panther factories began with a bombing raid on the DB plant on August 6, 1944, and again on the night of August 23-24, 1944. MAN was struck on September 10, October 3, and October 19, 1944, and then again on January 3 and February 2021, 1945. MNH was not attacked until March 14 and March 28, 1945. In addition to interfering with tank production goals, the bombing forced a steep drop in the production of spare parts. Spare parts as a percentage of tank production dropped from 2530 percent in 1943, to 8 percent in the fall of 1944. This only compounded the problems with reliability and numbers of operational Panthers as tanks in the field had to be cannibalized for parts. Production figures Panther tank production line The Panther was the third most produced German armored fighting vehicle. Production by type[citation needed] Model Number Date Notes Prototype 2 11/42 Designated V1 and V2 Ausf. D 842 1/43 to 9/43 Ausf. A 2,192 8/43 to 6/44 Sometimes called Ausf. A2 Ausf. G 2,953 3/44 to 4/45 Befehlspanzer Panther 329 5/43 to 2/45 Converted Beobachtungspanzer Panther 41 44 to 45 Converted Bergepanther 347 43 to 45 Panther production in 1944 by manufacturer Manufacturer % of total Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nrnberg (M.A.N.) 35% Daimler-Benz 31% Maschinenfabrik Niedersachsen-Hannover 31% Other 3% Cost One source has cited the cost of a Panther tank as 117,100 Reichmarks (RM). This compared with 82,500 RM for the StuG III, 96,163 RM for the Panzer III, 103,462 RM for the Panzer IV, and 250,800 RM for the Tiger I. These cost figures did not include the cost of the armament and radio. In terms of Reichmarks per ton, therefore, the Panther tank was one of the most cost-effective of the German AFV’s of World War II. However, these cost figures should be understood in the context of the time period in which the various AFVs were first designed, as the Germans increasingly strove for designs and production methods that would allow for higher production rates, and thus steadily reduced the cost of their AFVs. For example, another source has cited the total cost of the early production Tiger I in 19421943 to be as high as 800,000 RM. The process of streamlining the production of German AFVs first began after Albert Speer became Reichminister in early 1942 and steadily accelerated through 1944; production of the Panther tank thus coincided with this period of increased manufacturing efficiency. German AFV manufacturers at the start of World War II utilized only heavily labor-intensive and costly manufacturing methods unsuitable for the needs of mass production; even with streamlined production methods, Germany never approached the efficiency of Allied manufacturing during World War II. Design characteristics The Panther had a five man crew The weight of the production model was increased to 45 metric tons from the original plans for a 35 ton tank. Hitler had personally reviewed the final designs and insisted on an increase in the thickness of the frontal armor – the front glacis plate was increased from 60 mm (2.4 in) to 80 mm (3.1 in) and the turret front plate was increased from 80mm to 100 mm (3.9 in). The Panther was rushed into combat before all of its teething problems were corrected. Reliability was considerably improved over time, and the Panther did prove to be a very effective fighting vehicle; however, some design flaws, such as its weak final drive units, were never corrected due to various shortages in German war production. The crew was made up of five members: driver, radio operator (who also fired the bow machine gun), gunner, loader, and commander. Engine The first 250 Panthers were powered by a Maybach HL 210 P30 engine, V-12 gasoline engine which delivered 650 metric hp at 3000 rpm and had three simple air filters. Starting in May 1943, the Panthers were built using the 700 PS (690 hp, 515 kW)/3000 rpm, 23.1 litre Maybach HL 230 P30 V-12 gasoline engine. The light alloy block used in the HL 210 was replaced by a cast iron block to save aluminum. Two multistage “cyclone” air filters were used to automate some of the dust removal process. The HL 230 P30 engine was a very compact design which kept the space between the cylinder walls to a minimum. The crankshaft was composed of seven discs, each with an outer race of roller bearings, and a crankshaft pin between each disc. To reduce the length of the engine further, by one half a cylinder diameter, the two banks of 6 cylinders of the V-12 were not offset – the center points of the connecting rods of each cylinder pair in the “V” where they joined the crankshaft pin were thus at the same spot rather than offset; to accommodate this arrangement, one connecting rod in the pair of cylinders was forked and fit around the other “solid” connecting rod at the crankshaft pin. (A more typical “V” engine would have had offset cylinder banks and each pair of connecting rods would have fit simply side by side on the crankshaft pin). This compact arrangement with the connecting rods was the source of considerable teething problems early on. Blown head gaskets were another problem which was corrected with improved seals in September 1943. Improved bearings were introduced in November 1943 to replace the faulty ones that had failed frequently. An engine governor was also added in November 1943 that reduced the maximum engine speed to 2500 rpm. An eighth crankshaft bearing was added beginning in January 1944 to help reduce motor failures. The engine compartment space was designed to be watertight so that the Panther could be submersed and cross waterways. The result was that the engine compartment was poorly ventilated and prone to overheating. The fuel connectors in the early models were non-insulated, leading to leakage of fuel fumes into the engine compartment. This led to many engine fires in the early Panthers. Additional ventilation was added to draw off these gasses, which improved but did not completely solve the problem of engine fires. Other measures taken to reduce this problem included improving the coolant circulation inside the motor and adding a reinforced membrane spring to the fuel pump. The Panther had a solid firewall separating the engine compartment and the fighting compartment to keep engine fires from spreading to the crew. The engine became more reliable over time. A French assessment of their stock of captured Panthers in 1947 concluded that the engine had an average life of 1,000 km (620 mi) and maximum life of 1,500 km (930 mi). Suspension Interleaved wheels on a Panther The suspension consisted of front drive sprockets, rear idlers and eight double-interleaved rubber-rimmed steel road wheels on each side, suspended on a dual torsion bar suspension. The dual torsion bar system, designed by Professor Ernst Lehr, allowed for a wide travel stroke and rapid oscillations and high reliability, thus allowing for relatively high speed travel by this heavy tank over undulating terrain. However, the extra space required for the bars running across the length of the bottom of the hull, below the turret basket, increased the overall height of the tank and also prevented an escape hatch in the hull bottom. When damaged by mines, the torsion bars often required a welding torch for removal. The Panther’s suspension was complicated to manufacture and the interleaved system made replacing inner road wheels time consuming. The interleaved wheels also had a tendency to become clogged with mud and rocks and ice and could freeze solid overnight in the harsh winter weather of the Eastern Front. Shell damage could cause the road wheels to jam together and become extremely difficult to separate. Interleaved wheels had long been standard on all German half-tracks. The extra wheels did provide better flotation and stability and also provided more armor protection for the thin hull sides than smaller wheels or non-interleaved wheel systems, but the complexity meant that no other country ever adopted this design for their tanks. In September 1944, and again in March/April 1945, M.A.N. built a limited number of Panther tanks with steel roadwheels originally designed for the Tiger II and late series Tiger I tanks. Steel roadwheels were introduced from chassis number 121052 due to raw material constraints. From November 1944 through February 1945, a conversion process began to use sleeve bearings in the Panther tank, as there was a shortage of ball bearings. The sleeve bearings were primarily used in the running gear; plans were made also to convert the transmission to sleeve bearings but were not carried out as production of Panther tanks came to an end. Steering and Transmission Repair of the transmission of a Panther Steering was accomplished through a seven-speed AK 7-200 synchromesh gearbox, designed by Zahnradfabrik Friedrichshafen, and a MAN single radius steering system, operated by steering levers. Each gear had a fixed radius of turning, ranging from five meters for 1st gear up to 80 meters for 7th gear. The driver was expected to judge the sharpness of a turn ahead of time and shift into the appropriate gear to turn the tank. The driver could also engage the brakes on one side to force a sharper turn. This manual steering was a much simplified design compared to the more sophisticated dual radius hydraulically controlled steering system of the Tiger tanks. The AK 7-200 transmission was also capable of pivot turns, but this method of turning could accelerate failures of the final drive. Throughout its career, the weakest parts in the Panther were its final drive units. The problems of the Panther’s final drives were from a combination of factors. The original MAN proposal had called for the Panther to have an epicyclic/planetary (hollow spur) gear system in the final drive, similar to that used in the Tiger I. However, Germany at the time suffered from a shortage of gear-cutting machine tools and, unlike the Tiger tanks, the Panther was intended to be produced in large numbers. To achieve the goal of higher production rates, numerous simplifications were made to the Panther’s design and manufacturing. This process was aggressively pushed forward, sometimes against the wishes of designers and army officers, by the Chief Director of Armament and War Production, Karl-Otto Saur, who worked under (and later succeeded, in April 1945) Reichminister Albert Speer. And so the Panther’s final drive was changed to a double spur system. Although much simpler to produce, the double spur gears had inherently higher internal impact and stress loads, making them prone to failure under the high torque requirements of the heavy Panther tank. In contrast, both the Tiger II and the US M4 Sherman tank had double helical (herringbone) gears in their final drives, a system that reduced internal stress loads and was less complex than epicyclic/planetary gears. Germany’s wartime shortage of key alloying agents for making high strength steels also meant that to reach the desired high production rates a more readily available lower quality steel had to be substituted in the production of the double spur gears. Compounding these problems was the fact that the final drive’s housing and gear mountings were too weak, because of the type of steel used and/or because of the tight space allotted for the final drive; the gear mountings thus deformed easily under the high torque and stress loads, pushing the gears out of alignment and resulting in failure. The final drives of the Panther tank were so weak that their average fatigue life was only 150 km. In Normandy, about half of the abandoned Panther tanks were found by the French to have broken final drives. Plans were made to replace the final drive, either with a version of the original epicyclic/planetary gears planned by MAN, or with the final drive of the Tiger II. These plans were intertwined with the planning for the Panther II, and like the Panther II, never came to fruition. It was estimated that building the epicyclic/planetary gear final drive would have required 2.2 times more machining work, and this would have affected the manufacturing output. The mechanical unreliability of the Panther, a characteristic shared with the Tiger tanks, meant that long road marches would result in a significant number of losses due to breakdowns, and so the German Army had to ship the tanks by rail as close to the battlefield as possible. Armor Armor layout Initial production Panthers had a face-hardened glacis plate (the main front hull armor piece), but as armor-piercing capped rounds became the standard in all armies (thus defeating the benefits of face-hardening, which caused uncapped rounds to shatter), this requirement was deleted on March 30, 1943. By August 1943, Panthers were being built only with a homogeneous steel glacis plate. The Panther front hull had 80 mm of armor sloped back at 55 degrees from the vertical, welded but also interlocked for strength. The combination of a steep slope and thick armor meant that few Allied or Soviet weapons could penetrate this part of the tank. The armor for the side hull and superstructure (the side sponsons) was much thinner (4050 mm thick). The thinner side armor was necessary to keep the tank’s overall weight within reasonable bounds, but it made the Panther vulnerable to attacks from the side by most Allied and Soviet tank and anti-tank guns. German tactical doctrine for the use of the Panther thus emphasized the importance of flank protection. Five millimeter thick skirt armor, Schrzen, intended to provide protection for the lower side hull from Soviet anti-tank rifle fire was fitted on the hull side. Zimmerit coating against magnetic mines started to be applied at the factory on late Ausf D models beginning in September 1943 ; an order for field units to apply Zimmerit to older versions of the Panther was issued in November 1943. In September 1944, orders to stop all application of Zimmerit were issued, based on rumors that hits on the Zimmerit had caused vehicle fires. The rear hull top armor was only 16 mm thick, and had two radiator fans and four air intake louvres over the engine compartment that were vulnerable to strafing by aircraft. Panther crews were aware of the weak side armor and made unauthorized augmentations by hanging track links or spare roadwheels onto the turret and/or the hull sides. As the war progressed, Germany was forced to reduce or no longer use certain critical alloy materials in the production of armor plate, such as nickel, tungsten, molybdenum, and manganese; this did result in lower impact resistance levels compared to earlier armor. Manganese from mines in the Ukraine ceased when the German Army lost control of this territory in February 1944. Allied bombers struck the Knabe mine in Norway and stopped a key source of molybdenum; other supplies from Finland and Japan were also cut off. The loss of molybdenum, and its replacement with other substitutes to maintain hardness, as well as a general loss of quality control resulted in an increased brittleness in German armor plate, which developed a tendency to fracture when struck with a shell. Testing by U.S. Army officers in August 1944 in Isigny, France on three Panther tanks showed catastrophic cracking of the armor plate on two of the Panthers Armament The main gun was a 7.5 cm Rheinmetall-Borsig KwK 42 (L/70) with 79 rounds (82 on Ausf. G) with semi-automatic shell ejection. The main gun used three different types of ammunition, APCBC-HE (Pzgr. 39/42), HE (Sprgr. 42) and APCR (Pzgr. 40/42), the last of which was usually in short supply. While it was of only average caliber for its time, the Panther’s gun was one of the most powerful tank guns of WWII, due to the large propellant charge and the long barrel, which gave it a very high muzzle velocity and excellent armor-piercing qualities. The flat trajectory also made hitting targets much easier, since accuracy was less sensitive to range. The Panther’s 75 mm gun had more penetrating power than the main gun of the Tiger I heavy tank, the 8.8 cm KwK 36 L/56, although the larger 88 mm projectile might inflict more damage if it did penetrate. The tank typically had two MG 34 machine guns of a specific version designed for use in armored combat vehicles featuring an armored barrel sleeve. An MG 34 machine gun was located co-axially with the main gun on the gun mantlet; an identical MG 34 was located on the glacis plate and fired by the radio operator. Initial Ausf. D and early Ausf. A models used a “letterbox” flap opening, through which the machine gun was fired. In later Ausf A and all Ausf G models (starting in late November-early December 1943), a ball mount in the glacis plate with a K.Z.F.2 machine gun sight was installed for the hull machine gun. Turret Panther with regular mantlet. Panther with flattened lower (‘chin’) mantlet The front of the turret was a curved 100 mm thick cast armor mantlet. Its transverse-cylindrical shape meant that it was more likely to deflect shells, but the lower section created a shot trap. If a non-penetrating hit bounced downwards off its lower section, it could penetrate the thin forward hull roof armor, and plunge down into the front hull compartment. Penetrations of this nature could have catastrophic results since the compartment housed the driver and radio operator sitting along both sides of the massive gearbox and steering unit; more importantly four magazines containing main gun ammunition were located between the driver/radio operator seats and the turret, directly underneath the gun mantlet when the turret was facing forward. For the Ausf D and Ausf A models, a total of 27 rounds were stored in these magazines, which was reduced to 18 rounds for the Ausf G model. From September 1944, a slightly redesigned mantlet with a flattened and much thicker lower “chin” design started to be fitted to Panther Ausf G models, the chin being intended to prevent such deflections. Conversion to the “chin” design was gradual however, and Panthers continued to be produced to the end of the war with the rounded gun mantlet. In most cases the Panther’s gun mantlet could not be penetrated by either the M4′s 75 mm gun nor the T-34s 85 mm gun but could be penetrated by well-aimed shots at 100 m by the M4′s 76 mm gun, at 500 m by the Soviet A-19 122 mm gun on the IS-2 and at over 2500 yards (2286 m) by the British 17-pounder using APDS-ammunition. The side turret armor of 45 mm (1.8 in) was also vulnerable to penetration at long range by almost all Allied tank guns including the M4′s 75 mm gun which could punch through at 1500 m. These were the main reasons for continued work on a redesigned Panther turret, the Schmalturm, discussed later. The Ausf A model introduced a new cast armor commander’s cupola, replacing the more difficult to manufacture forged cupola. It featured a steel hoop to which a third MG 34 or either the coaxial or the bow machine gun could be mounted for use in the anti-aircraft role, though it was rare for this to be used in actual combat situations. The first Panthers, the Ausf D model, had a hydraulic motor that could traverse the turret at a maximum rate of 360 degrees in 60 seconds independent of engine speed. This slow traverse speed was improved in the Ausf A model with a hydraulic traverse that varied with engine speed, with a maximum rate of 360 degrees in 15 seconds if the engine was running at 3000 rpm. With the engine at 1000 rpm, the maximum traverse speed was 360 degrees in 46 seconds. A hand traverse wheel was like in any other tank, Axis or Allied, provided for the Panther gunner to fine tune the aim. This arrangement of the turret traverse mechanism was a slight weakness, as traversing the Panther’s turret rapidly onto a target required close coordination between the gunner and driver (to rev up the engine to maximum speed). By comparison, the M4 Sherman turret traversed at up to 360 degrees in 15 seconds and was independent of engine speed, which gave it an advantage over the Panther in close-quarters combat.. Ammunition Storage The locations for ammunition storage for the main 75 mm gun were a weak point of the Panther. No ammunition for the Panther was stored inside the turret, a positive given the weak side turret armor. However, a significant amount of ammunition was stored in the sponsons. In the Ausf D and A models, 18 rounds were stored next to the turret on each side, for a total of 36 rounds. In the Ausf G, which had deeper sponsons, 24 rounds were stored on each side of the turret, for a total of 48 rounds. In all models, 4 rounds were also stored in the left sponson between the driver and the turret. An additional 36 rounds were stored inside the hull of the Ausf D and A models – 27 in the forward hull compartment directly underneath the mantlet. In the Ausf G, the hull ammunition storage was reduced to 27 rounds total, with 18 rounds in the forward hull compartment. For all models, 3 rounds were kept under the turntable of the turret. The loader was stationed in the right side of the turret. With the turret facing forward, he had access only to the right sponson and hull ammunition, and so these served as the main ready-ammunition bins. The thin side armor could be penetrated at combat ranges by many Allied tank guns, and this meant that the Panther was vulnerable to catastrophic ammunition fires (“brewing up”) if hit from the sides. Combat use Panther tanks of the Grodeutschland Division advance in the area of Iai, Romania in 1944. Panther Ausf. Ds on rail cars in April/May 1943. Panthers were supplied to form Panzer Abteilung 51 (Tank Battalion 51) on 9 January, and then Pz.Abt. 52 on 6 February. The first production Panther tanks were plagued with mechanical problems. The engine was dangerously prone to overheating and suffered from connecting rod or bearing failures.

Gasoline leaks from the fuel pump or carburettor, as well as motor oil leaks from gaskets easily produced fires in the engine compartment; several Panthers were destroyed in such fires. Transmission and final drive breakdowns were the most common and difficult to repair. A large list of other problems were detected in these early Panthers and so from April through May 1943 all Panthers were shipped to Falkensee and Nuernburg for a major rebuilding program. This did not correct all of the problems, so a second program was started at Grafenwoehr and Erlangen in June 1943. Eastern Front The Panther tank was seen as a necessary component of the upcoming Operation Zitadelle, and the attack was delayed several times because of the mechanical problems of the Panthers, with the eventual start date of the battle only six days after the last of the Panthers had been delivered to the front. This resulted in major problems in the Panther units during the Battle of Kursk as tactical training on the unit level, coordination by radio, and driver training were all seriously deficient. It was not until the period of June 2329 that a total of 200 rebuilt Panthers were finally issued to Panther Regiment von Lauchert of the XLVIII Panzer Corps (4 Panzer Army). Two of the Panthers were immediately lost due to motor fires upon disembarking from the trains. By July 5, 1943, when the Battle of Kursk started, there were only 184 operational Panthers. Within two days, the number of operational Panthers had dropped to 40. On July 17, 1943 after Hitler had ordered a stop to the German offensive, Gen. Heinz Guderian sent in the following preliminary assessment of the Panthers: Due to enemy action and mechanical breakdowns, the combat strength sank rapidly during the first few days. By the evening of 10 July there were only 10 operational Panthers in the front line. 25 Panthers had been lost as total writeoffs (23 were hit and burnt and two had caught fire during the approach march). 100 Panthers were in need of repair (56 were damaged by hits and mines and 44 by mechanical breakdown). 60 percent of the mechanical breakdowns could be easily repaired. Approximately 40 Panthers had already been repaired and were on the way to the front. About 25 still had not been recovered by the repair service… On the evening of 11 July, 38 Panthers were operational, 31 were total writeoffs and 131 were in need of repair. A slow increase in the combat strength is observable. The large number of losses by hits (81 Panthers up to 10 July) attests to the heavy fighting. A later report (generated every ten days) of the inventory of Panthers on July 20, 1943 showed 41 Panthers as operational, 85 as repairable, 16 severely damaged and needing repair in Germany, 56 burnt out (due to enemy action), and 2 that had been destroyed by motor fires. However, before the Germans ended their offensive at Kursk, the Soviets began their counteroffensive, and succeeded in pushing the Germans back into a steady retreat. Thus, a report on August 11, 1943 showed that the numbers of total writeoffs in Panthers swelled to 156, with only 9 operational Panthers. The German Army was forced into a fighting retreat and increasingly lost Panthers in combat as well as from abandoning and destroying damaged vehicles. The Panther demonstrated its capacity to destroy any Soviet AFV from long distance during the Battle of Kursk, and had a very high overall kill ratio. However, it comprised less than seven percent of the estimated 2,4002,700 total AFVs deployed by the Germans in this battle, and its effectiveness was limited by its mechanical problems and the in-depth layered defense system of the Soviets at Kursk. Its greatest historical role in the battle may have been a highly negative one – its contribution to the decisions to delay the original start of Operation Zitadelle for a total of two months, time which the Soviets used to build up an enormous concentration of minefields, anti-tank guns, trenches, and artillery defenses. After the losses of the Battle of Kursk, the German Army went into a permanent state of retreat against the Red Army. The numbers of Panthers were slowly re-built on the Eastern Front, and the percentage of operational Panthers increased as its reliability was improved. In March 1944, Guderian reported of the Panther: “Almost all the bugs have been worked out”, although many Panther units continued to report significant mechanical problems, especially with the final drive. The greatly outnumbered Panthers came to be used as mobile reserves to fight off major attacks. The highest total number of Panthers listed as operational on the Eastern Front was achieved in September 1944, when some 522 Panthers were listed as operational out of a total of 728. Throughout the rest of the war, Germany continued to keep the great majority of Panther forces on the Eastern Front, where the situation progressively worsened for the Germans. The last recorded status of Panther forces, on March 15, 1945, listed 740 Panthers on the Eastern Front with 361 operational. By this time the Red Army had entered East Prussia and was advancing through Poland. Western Front – France At the time of the invasion of Normandy, there were initially only two Panther-equipped Panzer regiments in the Western Front, with a total of 156 Panthers between them. From June through August 1944, an additional seven Panther regiments were sent into France, reaching a maximum strength of 432 in a status report dated July 30, 1944. The majority of German panzer forces, six and a half divisions, were drawn into the British Second Army sector in the open country around Caen; the numerous battles became collectively known as the Battle of Caen. US forces in the meantime, facing one and a half German panzer divisions, mainly the Panzer Lehr Division, struggled in the heavy, low-lying bocage terrain west of Caen. Against the M4 Shermans of the Allied tank forces during this time, the Panther tank proved to be most effective when fighting in open country and shooting at long range – its combination of superior armor and firepower allowed it to engage at distances from which the Shermans could not respond.. However, the Panther struggled in the bocage country of Normandy and was vulnerable to side and close-in attacks in the built-up areas of cities and small towns. The commander of the PanzerLehr Division, Gen. Fritz Bayerlein made these comments about the weaknesses of the Panther tank in the fighting in Normandy: While the PzKpfw IV could still be used to advantage, the PzKpfw V [Panther] proved ill adapted to the terrain. The Sherman because of its maneuverability and height was good…[the Panther was] poorly suited for hedgerow terrain because of its width. Long gun barrel and width of tank reduce maneuverability in village and forest fighting. It is very front-heavy and therefore quickly wears out the front final drives, made of low-grade steel. High silhouette. Very sensitive power-train requiring well-trained drivers. Weak side armor; tank top vulnerable to fighter-bombers. Fuel lines of porous material that allow gasoline fumes to escape into the tank interior causing a grave fire hazard. Absence of vision slits makes defense against close attack impossible. Through September and October, a series of new Panzer-Brigades equipped with Panther tanks were sent into France to try to stop the Allied advance with counterattacks. This culminated in the Battle of Arracourt (September 1829, 1944), in which the mostly Panther-equipped German forces suffered heavy losses fighting against the 4th Armored Division of Patton’s 3rd Army, which were still primarily equipped with 75 mm M4 Sherman tanks and yet came away from the battle with only a few losses. The Panther units were newly formed, poorly trained, and tactically disorganized; most units ended up stumbling into ambush situations against seasoned U.S. tank crews. Western Front – Ardennes Offensive Burnt out Panther Ausf.G at the Battle of the Bulge, penetrated in the sponson. A status report on December 15, 1944 listed an all time high of 471 Panthers assigned to the Western Front, with 336 operational (71 percent). This was one day before the start of the Battle of the Bulge; 400 of the tanks assigned to the Western Front were in units sent into the offensive. The Panther once again demonstrated its prowess in open country, where it could shoot its victims at long range with near-impunity, and its vulnerability in the close-in fighting of the small towns of the Ardennes, where there were heavy losses. A status report on January 15, 1945 showed only 97 operational Panthers left in the units involved in the operation, out of 282 still in their possession. Losses were 198 Panthers listed as total write-offs. The Operation Greif commando mission included five Panthers assigned to Panzerbrigade 150 disguised to look like M10 Tank Destroyers by welding on additional plates, applying US-style camouflage paint and markings. This was carried out as part of a larger operation that involved soldiers disguised as Americans and other activities. The disguised Panthers were detected and destroyed. In February 1945, eight Panzer divisions with a total of 271 Panthers were transferred from the West to the Eastern Front. Only five Panther battalions remained in the west. One of the top German Panther commanders was SS-Oberscharfhrer Ernst Barkmann of the 2nd SS-Panzer Regiment “Das Reich”. By the end of the war, he had some 80 tank kills claimed. Fortification Pantherturm fortification in Italy, mid 1944. From 1943, Panther turrets were mounted in fixed fortifications, some were normal production models, but most were made specifically for the task, with additional roof armour to withstand artillery. Two types of turret emplacements were used; (Pantherturm III – Betonsockel concrete base) and (Pantherturm I – Stahluntersatz steel sub-base). They housed ammunition storage and fighting compartment along with crew quarters. A total of 182 of these were installed in the fortifications of the Atlantic Wall and West Wall, 48 in the Gothic Line and Hitler Line, 36 on the Eastern Front, and 2 for training and experimentation, for a total of 268 installations by March 1945. They proved to be costly to attack, and difficult to destroy. Panther battalion organization From September 1943, one panzer battalion with 96 Panthers comprised the panzer regiment of a Panzer-Division 43. Panzerbefehlswagen Panther Ausf. A (Sd.Kfz. 267) of the Panzergrenadier-Division Grodeutschland photographed in southern Ukraine in 1944. Battalion Command (composed of Communication and Reconnaissance platoons) Communication Platoon – 3 Befehlswagen Panther SdKfz.267/268 Reconnaissance Platoon – 5 Panther 1st Company – 22 Panther Company Command – 2 Panther 1st Platoon – 5 Panther 2nd Platoon – 5 Panther 3rd Platoon – 5 Panther 4th Platoon – 5 Panther 2nd Company – 22 Panther (composed as 1st Company) 3rd Company – 22 Panther (composed as 1st Company) 4th Company – 22 Panther (composed as 1st Company) Service Platoon – 2 Bergepanther SdKfz.179 From 3 August 1944, the new Panzer-Division 44 organisation called for a panzer division to consist of one panzer regiment with two panzer battalions one of 96 Panzer IVs and one of 96 Panthers. Actual strengths tended to differ, and became far lower after losses. The Allied response Soviet The importance of the tank on the Eastern Front led to an arms race between the Germans and Soviets to produce AFVs with ever greater armor and firepower. The Tiger I and Panther tanks were German responses to encountering the T-34 in 1941. Soviet firing tests against a captured Tiger in April 1943 showed that the T-34′s 76 mm gun could not penetrate the front of the Tiger I at all, and the side only at very close range. An existing Soviet 85 mm antiaircraft gun, the 52-K, was found to be very effective against the frontal armor of the Tiger I, and so a derivative of the 52-K 85 mm gun was developed for the T-34. The Soviets thus had already embarked on the 85 mm gun upgrade path before encountering the Panther tank at the Battle of Kursk. After much development work, the first T-34-85 tanks entered combat in March 1944. The production version of the T-34′s new 85 mm gun proved to be ineffective against the Panther’s frontal armor, meaning the Soviet tank had to flank the Panther to destroy it, while the Panther’s main gun could penetrate the T-34 at long range from any angle. Although the T-34-85 tank was not quite the equal of the Panther, it was much better than the 76.2 mm-armed versions and made up for its quality shortcomings by being produced in greater quantities than the Panther. New self-propelled anti-tank vehicles based on the T-34 hull, such as the SU-85 and SU-100, were also developed. A German Army study dated October 5, 1944 showed that the Panther could easily penetrate the turret of the T-34-85 from the front at ranges up to 2000 m, and the frontal hull armor at 300 m, whereas from the front, the T-34-85 could only penetrate the non-mantlet part of the Panther turret at 500 m. From the side, the two were nearly equivalent as both tanks could penetrate the other from long range. The Battle of Kursk convinced the Soviets of the need for even greater firepower. A Soviet analysis of the battle in August 1943 showed that a Corps artillery piece, the A-19 122 mm gun, had done well against the German AFVs in that battle, and so development work on the 122 mm equipped IS-2 began in the fall of 1943. Soviet tests of the IS-2 versus the Panther included a claim of one shot that could penetrate the Panther from the front armor through the back armor. However, German testing showed that the 122 mm gun could not penetrate the glacis plate of the Panther at all, but it could penetrate the front turret/mantlet of the Panther at ranges up to 1500 m. The Panther’s 75 mm gun could penetrate the front of the IS-2s turret at 800 m and the hull nose at 1000 m. From the side, the Panther was more vulnerable than the IS-2. Thus the two tanks, while nearly identical in weight, had quite different combat strengths and weaknesses. The Panther carried much more ammunition and had a faster firing cycle than the IS-2, which was a lower and more compact design; the IS-2s A-19 122 mm gun used a two piece ammunition which slowed its firing cycle. American and British The Western Allies’ response was inconsistent. The Panther was not employed against the western Allies until early 1944 at Anzio, where Panthers were employed in small numbers. Until shortly before D-Day, the Panther was thought to be another heavy tank that would not be built in large numbers. However, just before D-Day, Allied intelligence investigated Panther production, and using a statistical analysis of the road wheels on two captured tanks, estimated that Panther production for February 1944 was 270, thus indicating that it would be found in much larger numbers than had previously been anticipated. In the planning for the Battle of Normandy, the US Army expected to face a handful of German heavy tanks alongside large numbers of Panzer IVs, and thus had little time to prepare to face the Panther. Instead, 38% of the German tanks in Normandy were Panthers, whose frontal armor could not be penetrated by the 75 mm guns of the US M4 Sherman. The British were more astute in their recognition of the increasing armor strength of German tanks, and had by the time of the Normandy invasion started a program to mount the excellent 17-pounder anti-tank gun on some of their M4 Shermans (Sherman Firefly). British and Commonwealth tank units in Normandy were initially equipped at the rate of 1 Firefly to 3 Shermans or Cromwells. This increased until by the end of the war, half of the British Shermans were Fireflies. The 17-pounder had slightly more punch at long range than the Panther’s 75 mm gun. The US armor doctrine at the time was dominated by the head of Army Ground Forces, Gen. Lesley McNair, an artilleryman by trade, who believed that tanks should concentrate on infantry support and exploitation roles, and avoid enemy tanks, leaving them to be dealt with by the tank destroyer force, which were a mix of towed anti-tank guns and lightly armored AFVs with open top turrets with 3-inch (M-10 tank destroyer), 76 mm (M18 Hellcat) or later, 90 mm (M36 tank destroyer) guns. This doctrine led to a lack of urgency in the US Army to upgrade the armor and firepower of the M4 Sherman tank, which had previously done well against the most common German armor – Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs – in Africa and Italy. As with the Soviets, the German adoption of thicker armor and the 7.5 cm KwK 40 in their standard AFVs prompted the U.S. Army to develop the more powerful 76 mm version of the M4 Sherman tank in April 1944. Development of a heavier tank, the M26 Pershing, was delayed mainly by McNair’s insistence on “battle need” and emphasis on producing only reliable, well-tested weapons, a reflection of America’s 3,000 mile supply line to Europe. U.S. awareness of the inadequacies of their tanks grew only slowly. All U.S. M4 Shermans that landed in Normandy in June 1944 had the 75 mm gun. The 75 mm M4 gun could not penetrate the Panther from the front at all, although it could penetrate various parts of the Panther from the side at ranges from 400 m to 2600 m. The 76 mm gun could also not penetrate the front hull armor of the Panther, but could penetrate the Panther turret mantlet at very close range. In August 1944, the HVAP (high velocity armor-piercing) 76 mm round was introduced to improve the performance of the 76 mm M4 Shermans. With a tungsten core, this round could still not penetrate the Panther glacis plate, but could punch through the Panther mantlet at 800 to 1000 yards, instead of the usual 100 yards for the normal 76 mm round. However, tungsten production shortages meant that this round was always in short supply, with only a few rounds available per tank, and some M4 Sherman units never received any. The 90 mm M36 tank destroyer was introduced in September 1944; the 90 mm round also proved to have difficulty penetrating the Panther’s glacis plate, and it was not until an HVAP version of the round was developed that it could effectively penetrate it from combat range. It was very effective against the Panther’s front turret and from the side, however. The high U.S. tank losses in the Battle of the Bulge against a force largely of Panther tanks brought about a clamor for better armor and firepower. At General Eisenhower’s request, only 76 mm M4 Shermans were shipped to Europe for the remainder of the war. Small numbers of the M26 Pershing were also rushed into combat in late February 1945. A dramatic newsreel film was recorded by a U.S. Signal Corps cameraman of an M26 stalking and then blowing up a Panther in the city of Cologne, after the Panther had knocked out two M4 Shermans. Production of Panther tanks and other German tanks dropped off sharply after January 1945, and eight of the Panther regiments still on the Western Front were transferred to the Eastern Front in February 1945. The result was that for the rest of the war during 1945, the greatest threats to the tanks of the Western Allies were no longer German tanks, but infantry anti-tank weapons such as the Panzerschreck and Panzerfaust, and infantry anti-tank guns such as the ubiquitous 7.5 cm Pak 40, and mobile anti-tank guns such as the Marder, StuG III, StuG IV, and Jagdpanzer. A German Army status report dated March 15, 1945 showed 117 Panthers left in the entire Western Front, of which only 49 were operational, ). Further development Panther II This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2009) Panther II on display at Patton Cavalry and Armor Museum, Fort Knox, KY. The turret on display was not originally fitted to this hull and was installed later. The early impetus for upgrading the Panther came from the concern of Hitler and others that the Panther lacked sufficient armor. Hitler had already insisted on an increase in armor to the Panther once, early in its design process in 1942. Discussions involving Hitler in January 1943 called for a Panther tank with further increased armor, initially referred to as Panther 2 (it became the Panther II after April 1943). This upgrade increased the glacis plate to 100 mm (3.9 in), the side armor to 60 mm (2.4 in), and the top armor to 30 mm (1.2 in). Production of the Panther 2 was slated to begin in September 1943. In a meeting on February 10, 1943, further design changes were proposed – including changes to the steering gears and final drives. Another meeting on February 17, 1943 focused on sharing and standardizing parts between the next Tiger tank and the Panther 2, such as the transmission, roadwheels, and running gear. Additional meetings in February began to outline the various components for the Panther 2, including use of the 88 mm L/71 KwK 43 gun. In March 1943, MAN indicated that the first Panther 2 prototype would be completed by August 1943. A number of engines were under consideration for use in the Panther II, among them the new Maybach HL 234 fuel-injected engine (900 hp operated by an 8-speed hydraulic transmission). Thus, plans to replace the original Panther design with the Panther II were already underway before the first Panther had even seen combat. From May to June 1943, further work on the Panther II ceased at the various manufacturers gearing up to produce the tank as the focus was shifted to expanding production of the original Panther tank. It is not clear if there was ever an official cancellation of the Panther II – this may have been because the Panther II upgrade pathway was started originally at the insistence of Hitler. The direction that the Panther II design was headed would not have been consistent with Germany’s need for a mass-produced tank, which was the goal of the Reich Ministry of Armament and War Production. One Panther II chassis was completed and eventually captured by the U.S.; it is now on display at the Patton Museum in Fort Knox. An Ausf G turret is mounted on this chassis. Panther Ausf. F After the Panther II project died, a more limited upgrade of the Panther was planned, centered around a re-designed turret. The Ausf F variant was slated for production in April 1945, but the war ended these plans. The earliest known redesign of the Panther turret was dated November 7, 1943 and featured a narrow gun mantlet behind a 120 mm (4.7 in) thick turret front plate. Another design drawing by Rheinmettall dated March 1, 1944 reduced the width of the turret front even further; this was the Turm-Panther (Schmale Blende) (Panther with narrow gun mantlet). Several experimental Schmalturm were built in 1944 with modified versions of the 75mm KwK 42 L/70, which were given the designation of KwK 44/1. A few were captured and shipped back to the U.S. and Britain. One is on display at the Bovington Tank Museum Model of Panther Ausf. F with proposed Schmalturm The Schmalturm had a much narrower front face of 120 mm (4.7 in) armor sloped at 20 degrees; side turret armor was increased to 60 mm (2.4 in) from 45 mm (1.8 in); roof turret armor increased to 40 mm (1.6 in) from 16 mm (0.63 in); and a bell shaped gun mantlet similar to that of the Tiger II was used. This increased armor protection also had a slight weight saving due to the overall smaller size of the turret. The Panther Ausf F would have had the Schmalturm, with its better ballistic protection, and an extended front hull roof which was slightly thicker. The Ausf F’s Schmalturm was to have a built-in stereoscopic rangefinder and lower weight than the original Panther turrets. A number of Ausf F hulls were built at Daimler-Benz and Ruhrstahl-Hattingen steelworks; however there is no evidence that any completed Ausf F saw service before the end of the war. Proposals to equip the Schmalturm with the 88mm KwK 43 L/71 were made from January through March 1945. These would have likely equipped future German tanks but none were built, as the war ended. E-50 The E series of tanks E-25, E-50, E-75, E-100 (the numbers designated their weight class) – was proposed to further streamline production with an even greater sharing of common parts and simplification of design. In this scheme, the Panther tank would have evolved into the E-50. A conical spring system was proposed to replace the complex and costly dual torsion bar system. The Schmalturm would have been used, likely with a variant of the 88 mm L/71 gun. Derived vehicles Bergepanther on display at Saumur armour museum Jagdpanther – heavy tank destroyer with the 88 mm L/71 Befehlspanzer Panther – command tank with additional radio equipment Beobachtungspanzer Panther – observation tank for artillery spotters; dummy gun; armed with only two MG 34 Bergepanther – armored recovery vehicle Postwar and foreign use This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2009) Although a technologically sophisticated vehicle for its time, the Panther’s design had only a very limited influence on postwar tank development. The Panther was (arguably) an early precursor to the modern Main Battle Tank, but apart from this debatable distinction only the French postwar AMX 50 tank prototype was directly and significantly influenced by it. While the AMX 50 never actually entered series production, the French did produce a modified version of the Panther’s 75 mm KwK 42 L/70 gun, as the 75 mm DEFA and CN75-50 gun. This gun equipped the first iteration of the AMX 13 light tank as well as the EBR armored car, and was also used by the Israeli M50 Super Sherman.[citation needed] The Panther itself also saw some limited use outside the German military, both before and after 1945. During the war, the Red Army employed a number of captured Panthers. These were repainted with prominent Soviet emblems and tactical markings to avoid friendly fire incidents. The Red Army still used a few Panthers as late as spring 1945.[citation needed] During March-April 1945 Bulgaria received 15 Panthers of various makes (D. A and G’s) from captured and overhauled Soviet stocks, they only saw limited (training) service use. They were dug down, with automotive components removed, as pillboxes along the Bulgarian-Turkish border as early as the late 40′s. The final fate of these pillbox Panthers is unknown but sources indicate that they were replaced and scrapped sometime during the 1950′s. One captured vehicle (nicknamed “Cuckoo”) also saw service with the British Coldstream Guards for some time. Japan reportedly bought a single Panther Ausf. D for reverse engineering purposes in 1943. However the tank apparently never actually made it to Japan. The Panther’s sloped armour and turret design nevertheless did influence the design of Japans last wartime tank prototypes; the medium Type 4 Chi-To and heavy Type 5 Chi-Ri. After the war, France was able to recover enough operable vehicles and components to equip the French Army’s 503e Rgiment de Chars de Combat with a force of fifty Panthers. These remained in service until about 1950, by which time they had all been replaced by French-built ARL 44 heavy tanks. In 1946, Sweden sent a delegation to France to examine surviving specimens of German military vehicles. During their visit, the delegates found a few surviving Panthers and had one shipped to Sweden for further testing and evaluation. Testing continued until 1961. The tank is currently on display in the Deutsches Panzermuseum in Munster. Surviving vehicles In working order. Military Vehicle Technology Foundation, USA. Ausf. A Muse des Blinds, France. Ausf. A Deutsches Panzermuseum, Munster, Germany. Ausf. A Command Tank Wehrtechnische Studiensammlung, Koblenz, Germany. Ausf. G. Completed after the war in the Panther factory under supervision by UK REME engineers, used for tests Friedrich Christian Flick Private Collection, Germany. Ausf. G. Completed after the war in the Panther factory under supervision by UK REME engineers, used for tests Kubinka Tank Museum, Russia. Ausf.G Not running, more or less complete. Wilhelmina park, Breda, The Netherlands. The only known complete surviving Ausf. D. This tank was donated by the Polish 1st Armored Division after liberating Breda. It was restored in 20042005 for static display by Kevin Wheatcroft in exchange for automotive components. Panzermuseum Thun, Thun, Switzerland. Advertised as an Ausf. D/G hybrid, with a D hull and G turret. There are many questions surrounding this vehicle. The turret has a replacement sheet metal mantlet, vaguely resembling a late Ausf. G mantlet, with no ports for gunners sight or coaxial MG. The pistol port on the turret rear indicates an Ausf. A or early Ausf G. The hull with the “letterbox” MG slot indicates an Ausf. D or early Ausf. A. The turret and hull numbers could help identify the correct model designation for the hybrid but neither of the numbers have been made public. Kevin Wheatcroft, private collector, UK. One being restored. Early Ausf. A (DEMAG production). Two more to follow, one Ausf. A and one Ausf. A converted to a D. The restored Panther ausf A on display at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. Canadian War Museum. In January 2008 a partially restored Panther Ausf. A was put on display. It had been donated to the museum from CFB Borden, which acquired it following V-E celebrations in May 1945. It had spent two years in restoration prior to being put on public display. Rex & Rod Cadman Collection, UK. Ausf. A US Army Ordnance Museum. Ausf. A Sinsheim Auto & Technik Museum, Sinsheim, Germany. Ausf. A Muse des Blinds, Saumur, France. Ausf. A Muse des Blinds, Saumur, France. Ausf. A Mourmelon-le-Grand, France. Ausf. A Muse des Blinds, Saumur, France. Ausf. G Bovington Tank Museum, UK. Ausf. G. Completed after the war in the Panther factory under supervision by UK REME engineers, used for tests. Panther in the river at Houffalize, 1945 Houffalize in the Ardennes region of Belgium. A Panther Ausf. G can be found in the village. It fell into the river during the Battle of the Bulge and was later retrieved as a memorial. US Army Ordnance Museum. An Ausf. G with one of two surviving turrets with the flattened lower (‘chin’) mantlet National War and Resistance Museum, Overloon, Netherlands. Ausf. G General George Patton Museum, Fort Knox, KY, USA. Ausf. G General George Patton Museum, Fort Knox, KY, USA. Panther II chassis with a late Ausf. G turret, the second surviving turret with the flattened lower (‘chin’) mantlet. Restored with many components from the Ausf. G in the Museum collection. Wrecks. Sinsheim Auto & Technik Museum, Sinsheim, Germany. Ausf. A August 1944 Museum, Falaise, France. Ausf. A Kevin Wheatcroft, private collector, UK. Ausf. A. Will be restored. All components needed are already sourced or remanufactured. Kevin Wheatcroft, private collector, UK. Ausf. A. Will be restored to an Ausf. D. All components needed are already sourced or remanufactured. Grandmenil, Belgium. Ausf. G Celles, Houyet, Belgium. Ausf. G Detailed specifications Three-view profile of Pzkpfw. V Ausf. A. Copyright Giovanni Paulli. Crew: 5 Dimensions Length including gun: 8.66 m hull only: 6.87 m Width: hull: 3.27 m, with skirt plates: 3.42 m Height: 2.99 m Combat weight: Ausf. D 43.0 t Ausf. A 45.5 tonnes Ausf. G 44.8 t (46.58 t with steel road wheels) Performance Road speed: 55 km/h at 3,000 rpm (46 km/h at 2,500 rpm) Road range: 200 km Suspension and tracks type: dual torsion-bar Shock absorbers: on 2nd and 7th swing arms on either side Track type: Kgs 64/660/150 du…

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Concept cars or show cars are generally designed to demonstrate a new concept whether in the design, performance or features. These are commonly displayed on auto shows where car manufacturers can gauge the level of acceptance among the countless auto show attendees. These vehicles are considered to be some of the best looking cars given the fact that they are designed not for production meaning car makers can spend a lot of money in producing a single prototype. In recent memory, there are at least ten “coolest” concept cars which are not expected to be mass-produced anytime soon. These ten concept cars were listed by ign.com, a multimedia news and reviews website which also cover cars.

One of the ten coolest concept cars is the Chrysler Firepower – a concept car based on the iconic Dodge Viper. The said concept car was developed by DaimlerChrysler back when the German and the American companies were still together. One of the most pleasing attributes of this concept car is its sleek styling and luxurious interior. Not only does the Firepower boasts of its looks but also of its power which comes from a 6.1-liter HEMI V8 engine.

According to Chrysler, the Firepower concept’s engine can produce as much as 425 horsepower and can go from zero to 60 miles per hour in just 4.5 seconds. With Chrysler facing reduced sales and being separated from its parent, the production of the Firepower is almost impossible indeed.

Another concept vehicle on the list is the Ford SportTrac Adrenalin. Just like the Chrysler Firepower, the Adrenalin was also announced to be produced by the Dearborn-based company. Unfortunately though for those who were expecting the production version of the Adrenalin, production was called off for undisclosed reasons. The Adrenalin would have been part of Ford’s Special Vehicle Team which specializes in the production of tuned version s of Ford production vehicles. The fact that the Adrenalin was supposed to be a “tuner” production vehicle shows how the concept car got into the list. Its production version was, before it was called off, would have been a V8 engine which reportedly can produce 390 horsepower.

Another advanced concept vehicle which made the list is the Jeep Hurricane. This concept vehicle is unlike the Firepower and the Adrenalin in the sense that this vehicle was never intended to be mass produced. One apparent reason for that is the cost of production since the Hurricane comes equipped with two HEMI engines. Both of these engines can produce as much as 335 horsepower and 370 lb-ft of torque. That means that the Hurricane has access to as much as 670 horsepower and 740 lb-ft of torque.

If the vehicle had been mass-produced, its engine could have produced more power if fitted with Jet chips aftermarket parts. The two engines are placed on both ends of the vehicle to give the rear and the front wheels equal power. The two engine configurations are not the only “cool” things about the Hurricane though. The vehicle has the ability to turn all four of its wheels inwardly which allows it to have a zero-foot turning radius. With those features, the Hurricane would have become the supreme off-road driving vehicle in production.

Next on the list of the “coolest” concept vehicles is the Maserati Birdcage. This concept vehicle was produced by the Italian car manufacturer based on the MC12/Enzo chassis. This means that the Birdcage not only has good looks but it also has the power under its hood to back up its sleek styling. A real statement in the exterior design of the vehicle is its canopy which opens and closes similar to that of jet cockpit. It was designed by Maserati to pay homage to the Birdcages of the 1960s which won races even against German cars.

Another concept vehicle on the list is the Nissan Terranaut. While it differs among the other concept vehicles on the list in terms of exterior styling, the Terranaut offers the most advanced interior among concept vehicles. This is a roving scientific lab complete with advanced workstations. This is one concept vehicle that will not be seen on any showroom in the near future. When it comes to the interior of a concept vehicle, the Saab Aero-X is on the top of the list with its cockpit resembling that of a jet fighter. Similar to the Birdcage, the canopy of the Aero-X is operates like that of a jet fighter.

Another concept vehicle on the list is the Suzuki P.X. This concept vehicle is arguably the biggest in the list. According to its manufacturer: “For people who want to indulge their sense of enjoyment without compromising family mobility, Suzuki presents the P.X. Inside it has a streamlined form that’s refreshingly modern but comfortingly familiar, to give a roomy, high-class environment equipped with everything you need for enjoyment. Three rows of limousine-style Recaro seats combine relaxing comfort with a second-row function that creates even more space. The P.X. is the ideal compact minivan in which to chill out and enjoy the ride.”

In terms of size, the concept vehicle Toyota F3R is not left behind by the P.X. This minivan exhibits the same characteristics of the Scion xB. Both the xB and the F3R are boxy but quite appealing in their boxiness. The F3R is also loaded with cool features such as ambient lighting, a lounge in the back, and a high-end AV system.

Another concept vehicle on the list is the Volkswagen EcoRacer. This concept vehicle is not only in the list for its good looks and high level of performance. That is because its 1.5 liter turbo diesel engine is one of the most efficient in its class. The fuel efficiency of this car may have given Volkswagen the green light to mass produce this vehicle but due to unknown reasons, the company does not plan to mass produce the EcoRacer.

Last but not the least on the list is the Volvo 3CC. This concept vehicle runs on an electric motor which makes it a cleaner car than the EcoRacer. Similar to the EcoRacer though, the 3CC combines its environment friendliness with stunning good looks and a performance level to boot.

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In the last article, we covered the top mistakes sales people make that can keep them from closing more business. Today, we’re going to take a closer look at an all-too common problem: what you can do to close an existing customer when your competition keeps lowering their price.

All sales reps face competition. And nothing is more frustrating than having your competition offer to sell to your existing client base at dramatically reduced prices.

Consider the following scenario: Your biggest client calls to tell you that they’ve been offered a cut-rate price on the very same products you’ve been selling to them for years. They like doing business with you, but with the pressure on to save money and increase profits, this new lower price is just too attractive to pass up. No matter how much you preach value to the customer, they continue to come back with the lower price and tell you they are working from a strict budget.

To make matters worse, your competition is also trying to offset the lower price with a longer contract, which will hurt your chances of ever getting the client back if you lose their business now. You know this is a risky move for your competition, and that they will probably lose money on the deal.

What can you do to close this business without taking a huge bath on your profits?

Step One: Focus on testimonials.

Testimonials are the most powerful weapon sales people have to prove their value to their customers.

Clients tend to believe other clients more than they believe you. So find customers who already switched for a lower price and then came back to you because their experience with the competitor was less than satisfying. Or find clients who were considering moving their business, only to change their mind when they realized that the long-term implications were less than positive.

These client stories will add firepower to your case and help you convince your customer that doing business with you truly is a better and more profitable solution in the long run.

As a side note: you should be collecting testimonials from every client you do business with regardless of how well your business is currently doing. Testimonials are your most profitable selling tool, and you can never have too many.

Step Two: Learn from history.

As your team’s manager, show your sales people that prospects who only buy on price are not the best customers for your business because, in the long term, they are not profitable customers.

If your sales team is confident in selling based on the quality of your service, they will seek out prospects who value quality over those who only care about price. Your team may have to be willing to endure the short-term pain of letting a customer go, in order to make long-term gains with other, more profitable clients.

Step Three: Reward loyalty.

Show your long-term customers how much you value their loyalty by creating an account management process that rewards them for keeping their business with you.

Most companies make the mistake of only offering discounts and bonuses to new customers. Instead of devising a scheme to reward new business, create a program that rewards loyalty. For example, perhaps your customers can receive a lower price after 2 years of continuous ordering. Or maybe longer-term customers can be the first to receive special new products or access training at reduced prices (or maybe even free).

Take a look at your current client acquisition plan, and make sure it’s not “sweeter” to become a new customer than it is to stay an existing customer. After all, long-term customers are far more profitable than new customers. Some studies show that acquiring a new customer costs as much as 15 times more than it does to sell more to existing customers.

Ask yourself: can you increase your profits by spending some of the money you currently allocate for landing new customers, towards keeping your existing clients instead?

Step Four: Give yourself some breathing room.

Make sure you’re never in the position of having to save an account at any cost, simply because it’s the ONLY account you can close this month. If you don’t have other options, you will feel enormous pressure to close business at any price.

What can you do to avoid this scenario? Always be prospecting. The best sales people manage a full funnel of leads (at least 3-4 times your quota of active qualified leads) at all times. This gives them the freedom to be able to walk away from an unprofitable deal, and focus their attention on a profitable one instead.

Step Five: Do your research.

A company’s website is a great place to do a little pre-sales call research. However, most companies only put what they want you to see on their sites.

If you’re trying to save a deal, you might want to dig a little deeper to find out more about your client’s past, present and future, what their customers think of them – and their reputation in the industry.

Start by using Google or any of the other countless search engines out there. You may be surprised how many blogs, message boards or other websites you’ll find that may provide you with some deeper insights you can use to ask your clients about the price issue. Just be sure to consider the source. After all, most message boards are unfiltered, and you can’t trust everything you read online!

Step Six: Don’t add value if your customer won’t value it.

Last but not least, don’t randomly add value unless you know for a fact that your customer will appreciate it.

Sales people often make the mistake of piling on extras that the client may not want or need. The result is that it will cost you more to give the customer something they couldn’t care less about in the first place – a perfect lose-lose proposition.

When I ask many of the sales people I coach why they do this, they usually tell me it’s because they “think the customer will like this.” Thinking the customer will like something is the same as assuming they will like it. You only need to think back to grade school to remember what happens when we assume.

Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the buyer. Ask questions to find out what, besides price, would keep the customer from giving their business to someone else. Then set to work to provide them with as many of those concessions as you can.

If the client doesn’t want any extras, then you can’t use the value vs. price argument to win this business. Quit trying and go on to something else.

In today’s highly competitive marketplace, pricing pressure is a constant menace. If you want to be successful, you need to make sure the deals you are closing are profitable ones. Although your first goal should be to keep your existing customers, be careful of offering so much that the client actually ends up costing you money. If your client base is too price sensitive, go out and find new clients that want the value you have to offer – not just the lowest price.

It’s not easy, but it is simple to do if you have conviction. The first step to finding better clients – ones that focus on value and not price – is making sure you are 100% confident that you are delivering such a high value to the marketplace, that all buyers will want to own it at full cost.

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The goal of this product is to target 2 main issues nowadays:
1. The increasing amount of online marketers trying to make a legitimate income online
2. An overlooked but incredibly big market needing online marketing services: the small local business.

Koenigs saw a huge opportunity meeting the needs of these 2 niches creating a new step by step paint by numbers type of opportunity in a box solution.

How does traffic geyser’s new product correct these problems?

If you have been online longer than 2 weeks you will understand that the key obstacles that regular people face trying to make money online are: lack of direction, a large amount of competition or many things to understand and setup before you start seeing any money.

Main Street Marketing Machine addresses this since the user of this info product, (online marketers), do not need a product, list, website, join-venture partners, business or marketing experience.

On the other hand it is targeting a niche that has a huge demand but little competition. Only 1 of every 38 online marketers is marketing small local businesses.

On top of that, this product deals with another large problem that we are living in this economy, the small local business have been suffering and struggling to survive. Even though they realize that internet is the future, most of them are losing tons of money due to the lack of online presence.

Traffic Geyser’s new concept not only shows online marketers how to build an online presence for small local business, get them ranked in the first page of google, listed in local directories, etc. but also gives you a step by step training on how to get clients, how to educate them and how even to outsource it all.

Now the main difference between Mike Koenigs’ program and anything else is that it doesn’t only focus on the know-how, but also and most importantly gives you all you need to automate the whole process: the tools, templates, software, etc. including a revolutionary feature the opportunity finder.

The opportunity finder will show you to find prospects, the competition these prospects have, their contact information and most of all, it even gives you the FAQ that people have about those niches.

This amazing resource alone will save you lots of time and effort allowing you to focus your time on what makes you money.

The feature I like the most that sets the Main Street Marketing Machine apart is that they include marketing strategies on how to apply all these resources: how to start, what to charge, the campaigns you can use, what and how to offer it.

This without mentioning an incredible support: constant webinars, Q&A sessions, to help members to actually apply these strategies in the real world.

If you are new in online marketing or you haven’t found success yet, this program is highly recommended.

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For most of the people I know, blogging would become their principal—if not their only—road to marketing if only…

If only they could find a way around the two problems associated with article writing… time and/or money.

Those same people would be ecstatic if they could swap hours (or potential hours) of daily article writing for the privilege spending minutes a day once a week to achieve the same result. Minutes a day—not writing—but simply using a mouse to access a simple process in Firepow 2.0

A program that uncovers news items, articles, even videos—and posts them to your blog or blogs, either randomly or in a planned, systematic way of your choice.

That sounds good doesn’t it? I can understand if you are thinking that it’s too good to be true.

Well, fact is, it is true.

It’s part of the new Firepow 2.0, and it’s being used right now by hundreds happy and excited Firepow 2.0 members—all over the world.

I used it for the first time myself a few days ago. My reaction? Sensational… simply sensational!

I believe that once you get used to using it, you’d simply whizz through getting you content into a blog in under 30 min. – max. And that would set up content dribbling into your blog not just for now, but for tomorrow… for the rest of the week… for the rest of the month… and longer if you wanted.

This astonishing Firepow resource, Content Blitz—an innovation of that sensational young Australian Internet marketer, Andrew Hansen, is already altering the world of ‘blogging marketing’

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This new and innovative program that is FirePOW 2.0 starts out with three key ingredients that you need to have in order to be successful with your online business.

A Profitable Method – there are some kinds of methods that are very effective for making money online and some that are not. Proven methods that have worked for people are the methods that you need to choose. The right tools – you can not do the best job possible without the best tools possible. FirePOW 2 gives you the tools that you need to do the best job that you can with your business online. Using the right tools can help you be more effective with running a business on the Internet. The right support environment – this is essential for success in any kind of business. You need to have the right resources available for you in order to have the best chances of success. There are helpful and powerful resources available to you with FirePOW 2.

Putting all of these key ingredients together can give you a winning recipe. You need to follow the methods that have proven to be successful for people, and that means avoiding things that you have already tried and have not worked. It can be expensive to keep trying different methods and still not finding one that gives you the business that you need. With this program, you will be able to have all of the advantages of years of experience with methods that are proven and that work.

If you are tired of trying and failing with different marketing methods to increase your business, you owe it to yourself to try FirePOW 2 and see what it can do to boost your online business. Find out and use the methods that have proven to be successful for so many others and put them to work for your business and find success.

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1. Call them by name – For any recipient, emails that have their name on it is suddenly much more interesting to read than something that’s 100% generic. Sure, every email for an opt-in list is machine-generated but putting in the recipient’s name still counts for a lot.

2. Put a name behind the email – Most users today don’t like seeing a generic company name in the From: field because that’s a red flag for spam. Putting a full name there will be a lot more convincing for the recipient who’ll be opening it.

3. Start with the best offer – Place your best value offer or the primary benefits at the start of every email. This is a follow-up to that perennial marketing tip of putting the more boring explanations and details towards the end of the email.

4. Make it easy to unsubscribe – This may sounds like it goes against basic strategy, but there’s a simple reason for it. If recipients don’t want to get your emails anymore but can’t find a link to unsubscribe, they’ll report your emails as spam – and that reflects throughout the whole email server.

5. Have a clear call to action – This is one of the most valuable of all email marketing tips and for good reason. Your recipients don’t have the time or patience to analyze and interpret your message. It’s going to work out a lot better if you make it clear from the get-go what you want them to do.

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For all you culinary folks or chili eaters, a sweet bell pepper is rated 0, containing no capsaicin. A pimento or pepperoncini is only mildly spicier with a 100-500 SHU rating. Green pepper Tabasco sauce may yield 600-800, regular pepper Tabasco at 2500-5000, and super spicy habanero Tabasco sauce topping out at 7000-8000 SHU. Widely popular jalapeño peppers rate around 2500-8000. BAM! Pure cayenne pepper typically packs enough capsaicin to reach 30,000-50,000, compared to more exotic 50,000-80,000 Thai peppers. Speaking of more exotic peppers, a Naga Jolokia pepper from India ranges from 850,000 to 110,000 and a Dorset Naga may reach 1,600,000 SHU, or 1.6 million units of fiery mouth burning hotness!

Capsaicin in its purest form has a Scoville rating that ranges from 15,000,000 to 16,000,000. Yes, that reads 16 million! The standard grade pepper sprays in the US usually achieve 2 to 5 million SHUs.

Pepper sprays are inflammatory, unlike Mace which is an irritant. Inflammatory agents will cause immediate closure of the eyes and will induce coughing, choking and nausea. Temporary blindness due to dilation of the eyes and the mucous membranes will swell up, effectively preventing all but life support breathing.

The effects may last from 20-45 minutes depending on the pepper spray’s strength. Popular pepper spray products, such as Pepper Shot are rated at 10% strength, boasting a SHU of 2 million. The Wildfire 18% contains enough Oleoresin Capsicum (OC) to achieve nearly 3 million Scoville Heat Units of stopping power. Bear strength Guard Alaska requires a higher concentration for those that venture into the woods, with at least a 20% concentration of capsicum firepower.

There are even triple action self defense sprays incorporating OC pepper, CN tear gas, and a UV marking dye. This potent combination sends your assailant into an uncontrollable fit of coughing and choking while his eyes are slammed shut. The CS tear gas causes a profuse tearing to the already affected eyes, as well as an intense burning sensation to the face. The UV marking dye marks the assailant and may assist in identification once apprehended.

Conveniently, many pepper sprays come on key chains. This is a good idea since most people will usually have their keys with them. But don’t forget about the times you don’t have your keys. The small investment in additional pepper spray may save your life or the life of a loved one! Then you will also always have your pepper spray within easy reach. You can also find covert pepper spray products such as pepper batons (kubotans), pepper pagers, lipstick spray, “Stunning Ring”, and hand weight Hot Walkers for walking and jogging. Pepper spray is also sold in gel stream formulas instead of liquid sprays. Gels have the advantages of longer distance, stronger pepper, very sticky on the target’s face and less contaminating overspray.

However, the best, strongest, and farthest ranged pepper spray in the world will amount to the SHU rating of that bell pepper if you fail to do three simple things: purchase some pepper spray, carry your pepper spray wherever you go and practice using it. This means buying extra pepper spray and actually “waste” it by discharging practice sprays to gauge the range of your product and improve your spraying accuracy. If you are going to under shoot or hit the wall next to an attacker, you mind as well pack your pockets with pimentos. Of course, with the affordability of peppered self defense products and the peace of mind you gain by being prepared, if you do ever find yourself in a pepper, err pickle… you can hardly consider it a waste.

It would be nice to believe that nothing will happen to you, but the reality of it is that an ounce of protection could be worth more than a pound of cure. What is Worth Protection to you? Your belongings? Your family? Your personal well-being?

Don’t be afraid to spice up your self defense, stay safe and be prepared!

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Of course many people are contemplating, as they do with many products, whether or not this will be the boost they need to unlock the door to online business success. This article will look at what about this product is pure hype, and what might be an actual benefit, in order that you might form an educated opinion about this program.

I might play devils advocate and start with the negative.

Firstly let it be clearly known that no product, software, ebook or membership, is going to make you money – YOU have to do the work YOURSELF – sales letters love to give the impression that a product will do something FOR you but unless you’re willing to MAKE IT happen yourself – nothing will help you.

I expect Firepow to fit this category. Particularly because it’s a software that automates certain tasks, I expect it convey the feeling of doing things for you. So don’t fall for it – whatever it says, remember that YOU will have work to do and if you’re not ready to do that then this product won’t help you.

Phew, now that that’s out of my system, we can continue.

What does seem good about Firepow so far is that it combines the functions of various pieces of software into one ‘machine’ so to speak – which if only for the sake of nothing else but convenience, makes it a good thing. Less programs on my computer, less to think about, and hopefully less to do.

The things it combines are the tasks of (as the sales letter indicates) creating, marketing and managing your niche blog sites.

It does these things with the use of wordpress plugins, and features inside a central software, from where you can view or edit any of your blog sites – another big convenience factor.

The plugins are both a list compiled from existing plugins on the internet and those created specially by Andrew himself.

It’s these fresh meat plugins that seem to be the big selling point as promises have been made of effects like stealing viral traffic, multiplying your content automatically, and giving the site owner the capacity to get in touch with other site owners for extra leverage.

Supposedly it does everything from create your site (content too) to get you traffic and beyond – a hard ask for any program and I guess we’ll have to wait to see whether it delivers.

Most of us know that niche blogging works but just haven’t connected the dots fully yet. If that’s you – Firepow might be worth a look.

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What is FirePow?
FirePow is blogging software that enables the creation, management, maintenance, personalization, and growth of more traffic for your blogs. All you need to do is come up with the content for the blog (whether it be affiliate ads, your own product, or original content) and then with just a few clicks of the mouse you’re on your way to bringing in more readers. That means more cliental and more revenue.

When you purchase your FirePow membership, you’ll have access to all of the following tools:

• Blog Creator. If you don’t have a blog yet, that’s ok. With FirePow’s “Blog Creator”, a blog on any niche can be running in almost no time.

• Blog Manager. If you have multiple blogs, it can be a hassle to log out of one blog to another. Managing all your blogs (and revenue streams) can be a long process. Not anymore. With FirePow’s “Blog Manager” tool, all blogs can be managed from a single screen.

• Promotion. FirePow uses RSS feeds, social networking site, and video uploading sites to promote a blog over the web to show up in more searches and higher on the list of search matches. This means a wider variety of readers.

• Plug-ins. FirePow uses 45 plug-ins to customize a WordPress blog anyway you need. Your blog can stand out among a sea of bloggers with unique home-made blogs!

FirePow Pros:

• Blog Import. FirePow can be used to create brand new blogs and to import any pre-existing blogs you may have into the system. This can be useful to get the same information to various places. Think “copy/paste” with a single mouse click.

• Blast the Internet fast. With FirePow, all blogs can be managed and also get links sent to the World Wide Web to promote the blog to dozens of websites instantly. This creates backdoors to your blog and boosts search ratings.

• Free content. Free content can be acquired easily through other FirePow users. Content and articles can be written specifically for a niche to be posted on a blog all by real people. This means more content and less work very conveniently!

FirePow Cons:

• Expensive. The monthly fee for FirePow is an impressive $147 a month! This kind of new blasting power can bring a great deal more income.

• Paid hosting. Basically, there are two options for having blogs made with FirePow hosting. 1) The blog needs to be hosted the blog on your own server. Depending on how many hits FirePow is able to generate for you, this could crash your system if you’re using a cheap server. 2) An additional monthly fee can be paid to FirePow to host the blogs for you.

FirePow can be a great tool to build a blog business instead of a traditional website. However, at $147 a month, it would be advisable to create numerous blogs in numerous niches to optimize income, and the usefulness of the producer in terms of income-to-overhead. If you only want to work with a single blog in a single niche, it makes more financial sense to do the work the old fashioned way

Jan Brass is an avid technologist and software expert. She consults on food industry software and other types of enterprise software packages available at http://www.smcdata.com

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I like to look at guarantees.

Guarantees on the Internet remind me of some of the lyrics of the old ‘70s song Games People Play, by Joe South:

Oh the games people play now

Every night and every day now

Never meaning what they say now

Never saying what they mean

I experienced the loss of US$50 when a very well-known man, selling an e-book in a very well-known forum, offered a money back guarantee if the purchaser didn’t think it was the best e-book on the subject he had ever read. Well, to be truthful, I didn’t think it was, and so I asked for my money back. I didn’t get it… nor a reason why.

Being very surprised about this I felt the right thing to do was to let the forum owner know about it, especially as he was urging people to buy this product. Well—he said he’d look into it, and to cut a long story short, he hasn’t answered my last two attempts to contact him: one by personal message in the forum and the other by posting to Support. And I still haven’t got my money back.

Naturally I’m now very skeptical about people who offer guarantees, and I empathize with people of the same mind. I also encourage people who are too trusting to be very much more cautious about them.

So what conclusions have I reached then in relation to the Firepow 2.0 guarantee?

Well I suppose I’m a bit biased. I’ve known the program creator and owner, Andrew Hansen, for a number of years. I’ve only met him the once, and that was about 5 years or so ago, but we have had a number of dealings over that time, and I’ve found him to be a most personable, likeable and highly intelligent young man of substance and profound integrity.

But more than that, I’ve experienced an occasion, without going into details, when a mistake that I made left Andrew in the position where he could have lawfully and even morally withheld a three figure sum from me. It was clearly my fault. But I asked him to consider refunding—he didn’t hesitate for a minute. That money came rocketing back to me instantly.

To me, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

So, with respect to the Firepow 2.0 guarantee, I would just say this: Read the guarantee thoroughly—don’t just gloss over it. Keep an accurate journal of all you do to honor your side of the guarantee, and if the program doesn’t deliver, Andrew will–to the tune of 110% of your investment.

You simply can’t lose.

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This article will introduce you to the program’s state-of-the-art facility that will enable you to slash your blog management time: The ‘Manage Websites” feature.

The facility could aptly be called a control panel—it certainly gives the blogger effective and efficient control of all their blogs on the one page. Furthermore, a line containing all requisite linking icons, tools and control data is allocated to each blog

Here is a list of what each line carries:

The blog name, which itself is a link to the blog site.

A record of the number of posts that have been as well as the date that the last post was made—a very useful tool when managing numerous blogs. An indication of the latest version of WordPress, together with the facility to upgrade to the latest version with a click of your mouse. Or for those occasions when there are tens or scores or even hundreds of blogs on your list, and WordPress is upgraded, all the blogs may be upgraded at once—two clicks. A single click displays WordPress log-in details and yet another icon takes the blogger to the WordPress Dashboard for that site. There are icons to get you to the main configuration edit feature and others that enable editing and posting of articles, as well as the simple creation of a back-up zip file. Yet more icons on the blog’s line home you into the unbelievable Content Blitz (you have to see it to believe it) as well as RSS content RSS submission, Yahoo answers, The Blog Network (I’ll write that up in coming days) and social bookmarks are all be called up with icons on the blog’s line.

“Manage Websites”, a one page control panel, is a truly magnificent feature that will save the professional blogger (and the newcomer) an inordinate amount of the time now spent on managing blogs.

It’s a brilliant concept.

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The next tool I want to discuss will, I believe, be of real interest to serious bloggers in that it provides the means to rapidly and simply interrogate Google Blog Search for posts that are relevant to your site.

Like the facilities for finding relevant videos and images, this tool similarly requires the insertion of requirements in three fields: Appropriate keyword; the number of posts required (choose from 5-100) and lastly, the post length (30-500 characters)
These posts are really invaluable for generating ideas for articles and for providing snippets of news content for addition to posts.

“Add/Edit Content” is also the place where additional pages such as Privacy Policy, About Us, Contact Us and so on can be created and edited.

The various categories for the blog’s posts can also be created in this section of Firepow 2.0

The configuration of your blog or blogs is of course a vital consideration, and there is a dedicated page to allow for the creation and editing of configurations. Whilst this page isn’t strictly in the ’Add/Edit’ facility it is very closely associated with it, and I’ll just briefly describe what this page encompasses.

The page has three tabs:

Edit Settings accesses blog title, description, time zone, Admin email and keywords.
It is here too that themes can be selected and changed and as at the time of writing there are 95 themes from which one can choose.

Edit Passwords provides access to WordPress Admin usernames, MySQL, FTP and various passwords and other data.

Update Plugins unsurprisingly allows for the amendment of all plugins. This is a one-click operation, and any need for plugin amendment is determined and advised by the program.
So there you have it…the magical world of ”Add/Edit Content”.

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Personally, the thing I’m looking forward the most is the re-jigged training program. To be candid, I never found the present program’s training easy to follow. Mind you, once I had ploughed my way through a particular feature and then re-visited the training for that feature, it seemed adequate; but realistically, the trick in good instructional design is to have the learner—not the learned—think that the teaching is not only adequate, but exceptionally good. And the most negative aspects resulting from bad design are irritation (which can soon give way to anger), and loss of time. Both prospect being exceedingly non-productive in a situation in which productivity is paramount.

I understand that the Firepow 2.0 revised training will be underpinned by a publication entitled Strategy Dossier: 7 Steps to Profitable Niche Blogs, which will take the reader through simple steps from the intricacies and frustrations of registering s domain name and arranging for its hosting, right the way through to the completion of a sale and receiving payment. This is, without question, an particularly relevant underlying theme, and provided that the instruction is simple, exhaustive and integrated, it will be an enormous boon to people like me. Or should I say: the rest of us.

My belief and conviction is that Andrew Hansen has the skills to bring this off.

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And furthermore, all facets are covered by really cool videos by Andrew Hansen, the creator and owner of the fabulous Firepow 2.0 blogging program.

Let me introduce you to just some of these awesome tools:

Upon opening up your ‘Blog Posts and Pages Manager’ for a blog, you’ll find a complete listing of all your posts; the category the blog is in placed in; whether it’s been published, or queued up for publication on a future date of your choice; it’s status relative to your chosen social bookmarking sites and the date on which it was created.

Hovering your mouse over the title of the post displays three choices: ‘edit’, ‘delete’ or ‘sb submit’ (submit to social network sites).

I’ll fully explain the extraordinary integration with social networks in the near future; the ‘deleting’ choice is self-explanatory; however when you click on ‘edit’ an amazing formatting prospect is revealed.

You’ll see all an abundance of formatting tools. You’ll never need more. There are all the common ones of course, but note these less than common ones: text color, highlight color, headings 1,2… , paste from MS Word, undo and redo, remove formatting, clean up messy code,  insert/edit anchor, insert/edit image, insert custom character, toggle spell-checker, ‘read-more’ post break and HTML source edit.

It’s truly mind-blowing. And there’s so much more to tell you about this wonderful ‘Add/edit Content site, and I’ll do that next day.

Do take the time to read what Andrew Hansen, the creator and owner of Firepow 2.0 has to say about this brilliant program—and thanks for reading.

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From accompanying  pop up color palettes you just choose the color  for your text and links; then decide whether you wasn’t the ads to be right-aligned or left-aligned, click  ‘Apply” and voila! You have Adsense. You can also choose ‘custom’ positioning, which means you can drag and drop the ad where it best suits.

If you want, you can choose to insert H1 and H2 tags. These will be added to your post’s  code, and so will be more relevant that tags inserted by WordPress that are added to the code of the post you are editing. They will be more relevant that those inserted by WordPress.  As with about every part of Firepow 2.0, there’s relevant video that will explain this more succinctly.

I don’t know about you, but it seems to take me forever to find and post images to my blog. But with Firepow 2.0 I no longer have that problem. Right there in Add/Edit I can insert a relevant keyword,  choose from one of three sites (or two of them or all of them)from which I want to download the pictures, nominate how many images I want to consider, make my choice and click ‘Add’.

How simple is that?

What about videos? Believe it or not, in this facility you can even add videos to your site. Basically you follow pretty much the same steps as you did for the pictures. The really cool part is that you can preview the video right there in Add/Edit to help you choose the best production.

And there’s yet more about this facility that I’ll talk about next time.

Thanks for reading.

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I found that to be more than a little frustrating at the time, but in reality it’s turned out to be a good thing, because by studying the Firepow 2.0 forums relating that time I’ve been able to get quite a good understanding about how the new software has performed, as well as gaining a perception as to how the users are finding it. It’s also enabled me to appraise the performance of Support.

So with respect to the functioning of the new program, I would have to say that, by and large, it is performing remarkably well. Some users had run into a few difficulties up till about 4:00 AM Monday US EST, but as far as I know, they have all been resolved.  People generally were very positive about Firepow 2.0 and quite a few have praised the potential time-savings that can be obtained with the upgrade. I will keep a close watch on how this pans out over the forthcoming few weeks, and keep you posted.

With respect to Support—well, they’ve been doing a great job, and have been helped considerably by Admin people and some of the experienced members. Mind you Its true to say that the majority of the help sought stem from folk being unused to the new design, but this will be a temporary concern because Firepow 2.0 is a much better design that the first version.

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Indeed we need to be reminded that the modern-day customer, especially in these difficult economic times, is even more demanding of good, even quality service. Delighting the customers is now the goal of successful business.

In this on-line environment, we are not able to make use of body language to show that we harbor a genuine desire to provide superior customer service. We have to rely, mainly, on the written word. That is the principal method at hand for demonstrating our genuine customer care.

I have to say that current Firepow management doesn’t come up tops in this arena. In fact when I joined Firepow I posted in the ‘Introduce Yourself’ forum, and many weeks passed before anyone welcomed me—and then it was a member who was new to the program. Was that an isolated incident? No, it was not; and it has been repeated on a number of occasions since. To me that’s like having a lovely reception area in a business premises with no one in attendance.

In my experience since being a member of Firepow, many posts to the forums have not been answered; have been answered incompletely and/or with a lack relevancy. I’ve had similar experiences with the Support desk. Delays of days in receiving responses have been experienced all too frequently.

I have even had messages that I’ve sent or posted to management people weeks before just completely ignored. Not often mind you, but once is too often.

On the other hand it must be said there has been a continuing improvement in this aspect during the last few months. I distinctly feel a change of attitude in the management team here; and I’m quietly confident that this matter will be resolved in a way that will leave these old experiences behind and forgotten.

I really do hope so.

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From the inception of the original Firepow until now, there have been complaints that the program is too expensive; and this latest incarnation has not been immune from that criticism.

And that is understandable. At first glance US$127 a month does seem to be a fairly high price tag; but realistically, it is imperative to examine the matter in a practical context and compare the cost of the potential outcomes from investing that sort of money in Firepow 2.0 with the cost of achieving similar potential outcomes at a conventional learning institution.

An examination of the earnings results of the members of the original program may be of help, and I know on a personal basis, at least four people who are earning net annual incomes in excess of US$100,000, and I have it on reliable authority that there are quite a few more who are achieving similar results. And it is common knowledge in the Internet marketing world that there a at least scores, and more likely hundreds of people who are earning at that level from blogging.

Now let’s look at the other side of the coin. Today I established the cost obtaining a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Southern Queensland. The three year course costs AU$26,000.

But a graduate of that course would not be able to command a salary of AU$100,000. To have a reasonable chance of doing that would require an MBA, which would require a further 1.5 years of study at a cost of AU$13,000.

In other words: 4.5 years of study and total investment of AU$39,000.

And at the end of that 4.5 year the university doesn’t guarantee either that the student will graduate OR get employment at AU$100,000 per ammum. What is more, there is no refund of fees in the event of failure.

Let’s now look again at the Firepow people who are earning those six figure incomes, and take into account, if you will, that Firepow has only been in existence for about 18 months. In that time they’ve probably already earned at least $20,000 (I mean they wouldn’t have earned zilch for 18 months and then suddenly started to rake in excess of US$8400 a month—there would have been a gradual build-up to that), and in that 18 months they’ve only invested about US$2,800.

In addition, they had a 110% money back guarantee if they didn’t get what could only be described as a reasonable result after 60 days!

Hmmm. I’ll leave you to be the judge.

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If you are currently publishing a blog, you probably have a strong desire to see the blog receive a significant amount of traffic. This is because traffic represents the strong and rabid readership that makes for a successful blog publishing venture. And, of course, the greater the traffic there will also be great potential for earning revenues from the blog as well. However, building up a solid amount of traffic is not always as easy as it seems. That is why it is so helpful that platforms such as FirePow exist. It can greatly help boost the success of a blogging venture significantly.

FirePow is a blogging software program that is intended to make your blogging experience as simple and helpful as possible. Through this software, you can install a blog on the FirePow server which will have your blog up and published in a relatively quick amount of time. Also, as soon as your blog is published you will have access to a great variety of plugins that can make the blog perform a great many functions.

The management and content creation on this platform are excellent components. This is certainly a user friendly system and even those that may be unfamiliar with content creation will find this an easy program to use. It is a system that presents many helpful benefits to easy content creation and management. That alone would be a great selling point and there are other positives to it as well.

The blogs entries can be immediately fed through an RSS feed which will add significant exposure to the entries on the blog. This, in turn will raise awareness of the blog to a number of readers. Of course, the benefits to this are obvious including the ability to generate further advertising or affiliate revenues. And, yes, the profile of your blog will increase since more readers are becoming aware of it.

Another huge benefit to working with FirePow is that it is tremendously compatible with the search engine robots. That means the content on the blog will be easily crawled by the search engine robots and indexed within a short period of time. That means you work will be circulated throughout the internet in such a way that it will be exposed to a potentially large readership relatively quickly. Then, there is another huge benefit to the system and it relates to link building capabilities.

Specifically, the system allows you to build up links from a variety of sources throughout the net. This includes drawing links from social networks and other venues. This is a huge plus because links greatly contribute to driving traffic to the blog. This means your ability to monetize the blog increases which is another major benefit of the system.

If you are looking for a unique and innovative blogging software platform, FirePow is definitely well worth looking into. It can definitely enhance your chances for successful blogging and that certainly makes working with this system a smart move.

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I set up my first blog using Firepow 2.0 today, and although I not the quickest worker in the world, it took me just a few seconds less than two minutes.

So is it faster than the original program? You bet.

I’ve always used a self-designed template when setting up blogs, into which I insert all the data than I,m going to need. I find that this helps me focus on getting everything accurate and as I do this in my word processor, it also ensures that the spelling checked, thus saving a possible edit at a later time.

So then it’s just a matter of setting up Firepow 2.0 in one browser tab and my word processor in another, and simply cutting and pasting the data from one to the other.

This template is very useful by the way. I’ve found it saves a lot of time, and I recommend that you do something similar. Incidentally, if you would like to have a copy it I’d be happy to oblige. Just email me from the ‘About Us’ page, and I’ll shoot one off to you.

But to return to blog set-up Firepow 2.0 style.

While I was on the ‘Create Sites’ page I surveyed the videos that Andrew Hansen, the owner and creator of Firepow has produced to help those people (like me) through the mysteries of blog creation. They’re very good videos too. I think absolute ‘newbies’ might have difficulties what to them would be jargon, but that doesn’t detract from the value of the productions for the majority of users.

So what are these videos?

Well, there are two that deal with setting up a blog on a ‘pure’ domain, and then another two that cover the intricacies of handling a set-up on an add-on domain. Very useful…

But there’s more. In addition, three additional videos cover buying a domain name, buying a hosting package and setting up nameservers.

To summarize, I’d say that, Firepow 2.0 makes setting up a blog from beginning to end ever so qujick and extremely easy—except, perhaps, for the very inexperienced blogger.

Andrew and the Firepow team are to be congratulated.

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Andrew Hansen’s Forepow 2 review of a blogging platform is like great hands-on software for maintaining all the blogs that you want. Management of blogging requires maintaining a large number of blogs without any hassle of complications or problems in maintenance. Bloggers the world over want easy ways through simple methods to go about their blogging job and as a professional blogger you would want the right stuff.

No frills

You must have toyed with a wide array of blogging software to make things easier for you. The biggest challenge is finding the right software that really works and works well. It is hard to tell unless you have some experience in tinkering with software and the search engines are not always upfront with the correct advice.

The Forepow by Hansen has been able to trigger some interest among bloggers with its no-frills approach.

By using one log in account you can mange all your blogs in one place and avoid hunting around for them. Andrew Hansen has managed to do it by integrating the auto blogging tool called Firepow with the word press platform.

You can create loads of posts and pages without having to log in to numerous blogging accounts. Updating has become child’s play for the blogger with Firepow and he or she is experiencing greater convenience than ever.

There are different versions to it and the version 1 has much improved features like submission of contents that are automatic while you can do social book marking with relative ease. If you are a niche blogger concentrating on a particular market or readership, the function of book marking makes it a great tool with some unbelievable benefits.

Post articles wherever you want

You can log in at the log in page of the member by logging on to the internet and the browser operated facility makes it easier for you to perform these tasks according to what the Firepow 2 review says. There is no need for you to install the software and you get redirected to the main page automatically for easy navigation and article posting. You can post your articles wherever you want and make the necessary changes whenever you want.

The Firepow 2 of Andrew Hansen also enables you to promote all the blogs without having to look for other features. The main challenge of finding the right software by bloggers is to get something which is hands-on and without any frills.

It should be also without the prospect of scams and ensure better and quicker profits. Your best bet would be to check out reviews of all other software before checking out the Firepow 2 to get efficient result oriented software.

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It gives me no pleasure to say that it seems that way.

This is the promise held out by Andrew Hansen in his sales page:

As a Firepow member you’ll have access to 24 hour a day LIVE support.

That means you’re playing with Firepow at 2am and you run into an issue… there’s someone there to talk to immediately, WAITING to help you.

No waiting days to get your problems solved, period.

Well, that’s not the reality.

Since Firepow 2.O was launched. I have only experienced live Support for 2 days—immediately after its inception.

During that period I used it twice. On the first occasion there was a message to leave a support ticket, which I did. I received no reply. On the second occasion there was live help available and the service was good.

Since then there has been no live support that I have experienced—in fact I’ve found the process to be unchanged from pre-Firepow 2.0 days. That includes a turnaround of 4-10 hr on a query. “… at 2am…here’s someone there to talk to immediately…,/i>”  Yair, right. In view of Andrew’s grand promise, that is an appalling situation..

Looking at the forums (and that’s where a lot of people choose to ask for help) I found 2 people were left unanswered for between 12 and 17 hr respectively at the time of writing. .

Now they could have been help by Support during that time—I have no way to check that out, but it’s not very likely

Here’s why: I lodged a ticket yesterday myself at around 6:00 PM (the 21st), and there’s been no reply up till now. That’s something like 17 hr.

There are quite a number of other examples of sub-standard help arising from the forums that I have recorded and could have noted here, but I don’t intend to make the time to do that. I think what I’ve said is indication enough of a faltering support system

Quite frankly I’m extremely disappointed by this display of over-promise and under-delivery. It’s just not good enough, and the situation is made even worse by the fact that no apology has been forthcoming nor even advice that live Support could not be provided as promised. As well, there should have been an indication as to what could be expected in the future.

That said, I must hasten add that I do not think that this state of affairs lessens the value of Firepow 2.0 to any considerable degree. It remains a the best blogging software on the planet as far as I am aware, and I fully intend to continue using it. In fact I couldn’t imagine life without it.

There’s nothing terribly wrong with Firepow.  It’s management team, though highly skilled in IT, definitely need some guidance from appropriate consultants in the fields of management and instructional design.

To over-promise and under-deliver is to make a critical management blunder. My hope is that lessons will be learned from this, and processes put in place that will preclude any recurrence.

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firepow

FirePow blogging software incorporates over 60 plugins into your blog. This software is based on the wordpress platform and allows the user to fully customised and functioning wordpress blogs in a few clicks. It is especially awesome for seo purposes as well as blog integration, wordpress installation, management and so much more.

Firepow creates a site management tab where all your blogs can be managed from one place, an SEO tracking tool to monitor the search rankings of all your sites, and a task manager that tells you what needs to be done to maintain your blog/s and when.

This exceptional system is specifically designed to help you complete these tasks as quickly and efficiently as possible. Firepow also will Get Article Content for keywords you enter by searching the top online article directories for relevant content in your niche so you can automatically add them to your niche site.

Of course many people are contemplating, as they do with many products, whether or not this will be the boost they need to unlock the door to online business success.

Let me play devils advocate for a minute, and start with the negative.

First off, let it be clearly known that no product, software, ebook or membership, is going to make you money – YOU have to do the work YOURSELF – sales letters love to give the impression that a product will do something FOR you but unless you’re willing to MAKE IT happen yourself – nothing will help you.

I expect Firepow to fit this category. Particularly because it’s a software that automates certain tasks, I expect it to convey the feeling of doing things for you. So don’t fall for it – whatever it says, remember that YOU will have work to do, and if you’re not ready to do that, then this product won’t help you.

Phew, now that that’s out of my system, we can continue on.

What does seem good about Firepow so far is that it combines the functions of various pieces of software into one ‘machine’ so to speak – which if only for the sake of nothing else but convenience, makes it a good thing. Less programs on my computer, less to think about, and hopefully less to do.

The things it combines are the tasks of (as the sales letter indicates) creating, marketing and managing your niche blog sites.

It does these things with the use of wordpress plugins, and features inside a central software, from where you can view or edit any of your blog sites – another big convenience factor.

The plugins are both a list compiled from existing plugins on the internet and those created specially by Andrew Hanson himself (the creator).

It’s these fresh plugins that seem to be the big selling point as promises have been made of effects like stealing viral traffic, multiplying your content automatically, and giving the site owner the capacity to get in touch with other site owners for extra leverage.

Supposedly it does everything from create your site (content too) to get you traffic and beyond – a hard task for any program.

Most of us know that niche blogging works, but just haven’t connected the dots fully yet. If that’s you – Firepow might be worth a look.

I’m going to post the link for you because I think tools like this don’t come along real often. This isn’t your every day clickbank software, this is something you need to take notice of, period.

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Firepow 2.0 is the upgrade of Firepow, the blogging software that Andrew Hansen introduced in 2008, and before looking at what the new program has to offer, let’s be reminded of some of the reasons why the current version is regarded by successful bloggers as the superior blogging tool in the business:

1. Blog Creator enables blog building in minutes!
2. Blog Manager enables blog management from a lone control panel
3. Plugins can be automatically installed and configured
4. Task Manager–for the simple and efficient organization of tasks
5. Article Content Generator instantaneously provides free relevant articles
6. RSS Content Feature continually produces blog updates on auto-pilot
7. Blog Network provides multiple back-links.

And this is by no means an exhaustive list of the significant features of Firepow Ver.1

Firepow is not perfect. It’s very good… but it’s not perfect. Nonetheless, behind Firepow is a dedicated team of quite brilliant programmers who have perfection as their abiding vision. So far, they are making solid progress towards that vision and Firepow 2.0 is expected to be the embodiment of that progress.

So what will be the improvements inherent in Firepow 2.0? Well I’m understandably not privy to that, but I do know this much:

1. Blog creation will be even simpler and faster
2. The Blog Network will provide superior outcomes
3. Training will have a superior instructional design
4. Support, which is already topclass will go 24/7-and LIVE!

The astonishing new feature-CONTENT BLITZ-is front and centre. It will save you literally hours and hours of time.

It will give you more freedom that you dreamed possible

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I might play devils advocate and start with the negative.

Firstly let it be clearly known that no product, software, ebook or membership, is going to make you money – YOU have to do the work YOURSELF – sales letters love to give the impression that a product will do something FOR you but unless you’re willing to MAKE IT happen yourself – nothing will help you.

I expect Firepow to fit this category. Particularly because it’s a software that automates certain tasks, I expect it convey the feeling of doing things for you. So don’t fall for it – whatever it says, remember that YOU will have work to do and if you’re not ready to do that then this product won’t help you.

Phew, now that that’s out of my system, we can continue.

What does seem good about Firepow so far is that it combines the functions of various pieces of software into one ‘machine’ so to speak – which if only for the sake of nothing else but convenience, makes it a good thing. Less programs on my computer, less to think about, and hopefully less to do.

The things it combines are the tasks of (as the sales letter indicates) creating, marketing and managing your niche blog sites.

It does these things with the use of wordpress plugins, and features inside a central software, from where you can view or edit any of your blog sites – another big convenience factor.

The plugins are both a list compiled from existing plugins on the internet and those created specially by Andrew himself.

It’s these fresh meat plugins that seem to be the big selling point as promises have been made of effects like stealing viral traffic, multiplying your content automatically, and giving the site owner the capacity to get in touch with other site owners for extra leverage.

Most of us know that niche blogging works but just haven’t connected the dots fully yet. If that’s you – Firepow might be worth a look.

Thank you for reading our blog about

firepow

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