"3 o' clock, point blank range! Turn around, Black Knight 2 has been hit!"
"Our commander's down! Don't run, we're gonna fight!"
"Kurz, the periscope is broken! Tell me where to aim!"

Pictures at the very bottom of the page!

This tank is one entry of a group of (eventually) three total versions of my Panzer IV, short descriptions can be seen under each one:

-Sd.Kfz 161 Pz.Kpfw. IV Ausf. H, found here.
The main version. Interior parts and the fighting compartment are missing, and the hull is simplified as it doesn't need to be hollow. This version is for those that wish to retain all of the exterior detail and functionality of the tank, but don't need the massive part count that comes with a full interior version. Comes with working hatches, but no crew views.

YOU ARE HERE -Sd.Kfz 161 Pz.Kpfw. IV Ausf. H (INTERIOR)
This version includes everything I intended to be on this tank - at the expense of the performance of your PC you will be able to see an intricately detailed interior, perhaps the most detailed interior on SP, with full crew views where you will even be able to put your 'head' out of several hatches.

-Sd.Kfz 161 Pz.Kpfw. IV Ausf. H (MOBILE FRIENDLY)
EFFECTIVELY CANCELLED. Not enough people even seem to appreciate my work, so I'm not even going to bother finishing this one.

This post will serve as the main entry, and both interior and mobile-friendly versions will be released later and linked above and below in a pinned comment.

Here it is - the most immaculately detailed tank I have (and will ever) create, at least for a couple of years. I'll try to make this description a bit shorter than the other one.

I've spent weeks working non-stop, waking up at 10 in the morning and ending at 10 in the night, downloading as many pictures as I can of the Panzer IV from the internet, skipping meals just so I could have time to look at countless models and Youtube videos to find out the purpose of every single detail, the placement of every single round, the shape of every single bit of the cupola... even reading dozens of pages from a variety of sources from Hilary Doyle and Thomas Jentz, two titans of the tank world, and have read through Panzer Tracts 4-3 longer than I have any textbook.

I know it's unhealthy, and I really shouldn't have done the things I did to get this done, but... I've been a tank nerd ever since I was six. I've slept under the shade of countless metal veterans like the Vietnamese T-54/55s in Saigon. And since then, my obsession with tanks has only grown. I felt like pouring my heart and soul on this tank, a project I wasn't even getting paid to work on, for YEARS. Not because I wanted to get famous. Not even because I wanted to beat anyone else to the punch (there are other Panzer IVs out there). I just felt like devoting time to this project because I felt that everybody should get to know how much I love tanks... and what better way to do that than making the most detailed tank I ever possibly could make?

I know this individual tank so well that I could even tell you which factory it came from (Krupp-Grusonwerk), at which time (August 1943) which modifications it had when it rolled off the assembly line (For example, I know that this tank has Serie I sideskirts retrofitted onto Serie II sideskirt mounts with a homogenous 80mm driver's front plate and no side hull vision ports), and based off of my research of Motofumi Kobayashi's 'The Black Knight Story' - can even tell you which unit the fictional #800 even served in, the Panzergrenadier Division "Großdeutschland" in the retreat from Kharkov across the Dnieper river.

I have laughed with joy when I got that turret to spin around the hull interior, when I've made the gun recoil work for the first time, when I'd made the first hatches open and close, when I could sit in the gunner's seat, look around, and confidently say, "Yes! This feels exactly like it should!".
... And at the same time I have cried bitter tears whenever I'd messed up. Simple Planes has this annoying habit of shifting parts around after you save your design by a few decimal points, usually insignificantly enough to not cause too much pain... but with so many working parts on this tank I've had to literally rip the turret off multiple times whenever the game would decide to stick one single part on the turret to another single part on the hull, frequent tests a necessity to find what was broken, making it so I would have to endure the process of individually deleting every single part on the turret to find the culprit. This process would literally take days to complete when you had hundreds upon hundreds of parts to take out...

It's been a slog. But through the process of building the interior of this tank I've learned many things about perhaps Germany's most underrated vehicle, on the technical side or otherwise. I know every nook and cranny, every strange design decision, every omitted detail to simplify production...

But I can't be any happier to wrap up this chapter of my life.

Please enjoy the most detailed interior of any German tank ever made on this site. The mobile version will come in a few days.

The workhorse of the Panzer Corps during WW2 - the Panzer IV H!

This tank is meant to be several things at once - my 'magnum opus', a 'thank you' to both the incredibly helpful community and to Jundroo for creating a game in which you can create literally anything you want, and to the people who still might be following me - a goodbye. I've heard that post-secondary life is hard, and time is at a premium, so it's more than likely that I'll disappear for a few more years then. And I don't want to disappear without finishing this project!

Without further ado, here is the overview of the tank!

Features:

NEW!
-Lovingly rendered interior constructed over the course of one-and-a-half years, painstakingly researched and complete with as much detail as possible to see in the fighting compartment,
NEW!
-Accurate ammunition placement and size of ammunition (the every single type of 75mm round inside the tank has been created to exact specifications right down to the millimeter), with four round types represented (APHE Pzgr. 39, APCR Pzgr. 40(W), HE Sprgr. 34, HEAT Gr.HL38)
NEW!
-Working cameras for each member of the crew, with the ability to raise or lower your 'head' while also being able to look out of vision ports, hatches, and a cupola, while also being able to see bits and bobs move around (like the driver's levers or the gunner's cranks or even the commander hatch's locking handles),

-Blueprint-accurate hull and turret with dozens of photo-references used during construction, and gameplay of IL-2 Tank Crew,
-Historical combat weight of 25 tons,
-Fully functional turret, coax MG, and hull MG,
-Realistic armaments with accurate muzzle velocities, number of rounds, and reload speeds,
-Working hatches for all members of the crew, aswell as on the turret bustle bin,
-Working recoil with realistic recoil length,
-Fully-functioning leaf-spring suspension system to handle all types of terrain,
-Engine and turret traverse motor exhaust,
-Markings based on Bauer's Panzer IV from the manga series 'The Black Knight Story/Kurokishi Monogatari/Die Erzählung der Schwarzen Ritters', Pz. IV #800 (the fictional HQ tank of the Panzergrenadier Division "Großdeutschland", 8. Kompanie, 2. Pz. Abteilung).

CONTROLS:

EXPANDED CONTROLS, PLEASE TAKE YOUR TIME TO READ
NOTE: I highly recommend setting your WASD keys to pitch and roll, Q and E to yaw, and your arrow keys to VTOL and TRIM for convenience.

MOVEMENT:
Use pitch for forwards and backwards movement, roll for turning, landing gear group to turn on or off exhaust for both the engine and auxiliary motors. Speed is limited to 40 kph, and the Pz. IV has enough engine power to climb a 30-degree slope, true to it's real life performance.
For immersion (but completely optional) you may choose to drive at a maximum off-road speed of 14 kph, and only accelerate past this speed driving on roads.

ARMAMENTS:
AG1 + VTOL and TRIM for the radio-operator's 7.92mm MG-34. Ten belts (1,500 rounds) are available for you to use.
AG2 + YAW and TRIM for both the 7,5 cm KwK 40 L/48 gun, and it's coaxial 7.92mm MG-34. 87 rounds and eleven belts (1,650 rounds) are available to you.

HATCHES:
AG8 + TRIM: Front light and turret storage bin hatch. TRIM opens/closes the storage bin hatch. Recommend to turn OFF if you are using any of the other activation groups.

AG3 & 4 + VTOL, TRIM and YAW: Gunner and loader's turret side hatches with turret side-skirt hatches. VTOL opens/closes the turret hatches and will move your camera outside in the horizontal plane. YAW will allow you to 'sit' on the side of the turret and view the outside world. TRIM opens/closes skirt hatches.
It is not possible to turn the turret while also using the gunner's seat controls (AG3). This is intentional.

AG5 + VTOL & TRIM: Commander's cupola. VTOL allows you to move your head up and down to view the vision ports around you from several angles. TRIM allows you to make the commander's cupola hatch open/close. Put VTOL and TRIM all the way up to both open the hatch and 'turn out' of the tank.

AG6 & 7 + VTOL & TRIM: VTOL allows you to make the driver and radio-operator's hatches open/close, and will shift your head to the centerline of the hatch. TRIM is used separately to raise/lower your head, and can be used to view the vision port from several angles, or in conjunction with VTOL - to fully turn out of the tank.

CLOSING NOTES

If you have any comments, questions, or concerns about this tank, please feel free to say so. I'm but one person and don't really have anyone besides myself to ask to test out my designs, so there might be things I have missed. If there is something I need to fix with the design, I'll release it unlisted and link to it in a pinned comment below.

I'm also sorry I'm not able to add any flashing GIFs showing the function of the tank off like others have, I haven't had the time...

You are also more than welcome to convert my tank to be compatible with excellent mods like the tank mouse aiming control mod if you'd like, and even make custom skins (I'm definitely expecting one of you to make a Team Anglerfish GuP skin at some point) but do be sure to credit me when you do!

"Fahrer vorwärts, marsch marsch!"