Ukraine is reported to have rejected a consignment of Germany’s Leopard 1 tanks – on the grounds that they are technically flawed, and that Ukrainian engineers lack the skills and training to fix them.

Embarrassingly for Germany, this is the second time that Ukraine has turned its collective nose up at a delivery of German armour. When the first ten tanks – the advance guard of a total of 110 Leopard 1s that Berlin has agreed to supply to Kyiv – arrived in Ukraine, they too were found to be unsuitable for deployment on the front line. This despite the desperate need for armour to break through Russia’s defence lines resisting Ukraine’s vaunted counter offensive striking south towards the Sea of Azov.

Have German tank design and construction has become too complex and sophisticated for their own good?

German engineers who inspected the latest batch of Leopards destined for Ukraine in Poland have agreed that they need further work before they will be suitable for active service. But while Kyiv has trained soldiers to man the tanks, they lack the back-up crews to maintain them.

The perceived but unspecified deficiencies in the Leopards will raise serious questions in Berlin, which only reluctantly agreed to send their tanks to Ukraine. The decision had only come after much angst-filled debate about the wisdom and morality of deploying the tanks in a place where German Panzers were last in action in 1941 during Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union.

Eighty-five years ago, German tanks were the terror of the world when they spearheaded the Nazi conquest of Poland and Western Europe using the tactics of Blitzkrieg to bulldoze through fixed defences, leaving advancing infantry to mop up in their wake. Although it was Britain that invented modern tanks in the first world war, the army failed to mechanise and develop tanks after the war; it was left to Nazi Germany, under generals like Rommel and Guderian, to forge their armour into a war-winning weapon.

German tank design culminated in the deployment of the famous and feared Tiger 1 – a heavy tank with 100mm thick armour that packed a huge punch with its 88 gun. It sowed fear wherever it was deployed, from the deserts of North Africa to the steppes of Russia and Ukraine to the Bocage of Normandy. Ironically, considering the current conflict, the Tiger met its match in the Soviet T34 tank: an unsophisticated but tough workhorse designed to cope with the roughest terrain where the heavy Tiger was prone to break or bog down.

If the Ukrainians lack the skills set and personnel necessary to cope with the Leopard 1, they are likely to face even more severe similar problems handling the more advanced Leopard 2.

This raises the question of whether German tank design and construction have become too complex and sophisticated for their own good. As Ukraine’s counter offensive slows down to a halt amidst the worsening autumn weather, it looks as though the Teutonic tanks won’t be riding to the rescue any time soon.