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Big P wrote: For me, he is the true tank ace and the one that books should focus on instead of jumped up little Nazi fanboys like Wittmann.

I'm not sure that this is a very objective assessment. You're at risk here of making the 'good German, bad German' distinction that ignores a lot of the grey that really existed at the time. WIttman may have been a Nazi poster boy, but that doesn't mean he wasn't also an excellent tank commander. Just as the boy soldiers of 12th SS Panzer were, it appears, loyal (even fanatical) Nazis but also formidable soldiers. Wittman's record may have been embelished a bit, but it wasn't just the SS who were eulogised by the propaganda people. And even if you strip away a lot of the myth of what happened at Villers-Bocage, and allow for the advantage that being mounted in a Tiger gave him, it's still a remarkable achievement. I think Steven Zaloga makes a better point about these German tank aces, which is that they scored a lot of their kills in the East against badly trained Soviet tankers. He points out that Wittman was eventually killed (as now seems to be the accepted truth) by a 17-pdr-armed Firefly - the kind of weapon he had not encountered in the East - possibly because he had become overconfident about the Tiger's ability to withstand enemy fire. Zaloga has his own bias (he tends to big up the US tankers, usually at the expense of the Germans), but this still rings true.

Incidentally, Will Fey's book is of dubious veracity. I bought it many years ago, and chucked it away.

Big P wrote:Anti-establishment is the phrase you want.

It is. But which establishment? Cultivating a beard could just as easily be bucking the much more immediate authority of the Heer and "army regs", as an attempt to resist the awesome state machine.


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Tailgunner wrote:

Big P wrote: For me, he is the true tank ace and the one that books should focus on instead of jumped up little Nazi fanboys like Wittmann.

I'm not sure that this is a very objective assessment. You're at risk here of making the 'good German, bad German' distinction that ignores a lot of the grey that really existed at the time. WIttman may have been a Nazi poster boy, but that doesn't mean he wasn't also an excellent tank commander. Just as the boy soldiers of 12th SS Panzer were, it appears, loyal (even fanatical) Nazis but also formidable soldiers. Wittman's record may have been embelished a bit, but it wasn't just the SS who were eulogised by the propaganda people. And even if you strip away a lot of the myth of what happened at Villers-Bocage, and allow for the advantage that being mounted in a Tiger gave him, it's still a remarkable achievement. I think Steven Zaloga makes a better point about these German tank aces, which is that they scored a lot of their kills in the East against badly trained Soviet tankers. He points out that Wittman was eventually killed (as now seems to be the accepted truth) by a 17-pdr-armed Firefly - the kind of weapon he had not encountered in the East - possibly because he had become overconfident about the Tiger's ability to withstand enemy fire. Zaloga has his own bias (he tends to big up the US tankers, usually at the expense of the Germans), but this still rings true.

Incidentally, Will Fey's book is of dubious veracity. I bought it many years ago, and chucked it away.

The best way to achieve veracity is to compare and contrast sources. Generally, whatever they all agree on is usually a fairly accurate bash at "the truth" (given that no source is perfect.). Thus Fey's collection of other peoples accounts is as useful as anything by Zaloga, or Ambrose, or Chant, or my old grandad, or Big P.

ArbeitsSchu wrote:The best way to achieve veracity is to compare and contrast sources. Generally, whatever they all agree on is usually a fairly accurate bash at "the truth" (given that no source is perfect.). Thus Fey's collection of other peoples accounts is as useful as anything by Zaloga, or Ambrose, or Chant, or my old grandad, or Big P.

Er, yes. And Fey's collection of extracted bits and pieces isn't very useful by itself, and many of the extracts don't sit too well with other sources.

So don't treat it in isolation then? If nothing else its useful as a source to prove how German vets are all lying gaks (or something.)

ArbeitsSchu wrote:So don't treat it in isolation then? If nothing else its useful as a source to prove how German vets are all lying gaks (or something.)

There are just much better, more complete accounts available. Also, the quality of the photos in that book is abysmal!

Which edition? The Stackpole edition pics seem as good as any others I've seen, and certainly no worse.

Returning to the subject (!), I came across some photos in Panzerwrecks I which might be the source for the stowage boxes that PSC have provided for the Ausf G version of the Panther. It looks as though some late Ausf Gs in Italy were fitted with customised steel covers over the engine deck. These look a bit like tool boxes, but are in fact hollow shapes, apparently intended to provide protection against air attack and shell splinters. They look to be the same size as the parts supplied with the PSC Panthers.

A hollow shape isn't much cop against an air attack surely? Plus it would be such a small % of the top of the vehicle the weapon could land just about anywhere across the top and knock it out. I might be wrong, but I struggle to see this logic.

However I have to say good find Tailgunner and it's a worthy post regardless of the air attack piece.

Apparently the idea was to protect the air intakes, which makes more sense. mazingly, I found a site with some more information on this feature. In the photos in Panzerwrecks, these covers look just like the stowage boxes on the PSC Panthers. I may of course be wrong about this being the source.

http://www.panther1944.de/en/sdkfz-171-pzkpfwg-panther/technik/feldmodifikationen.html

Raised plates were indeed placed over the intakes on Panthers. The ones I've seen tend to be a flat plate, but that hardly precludes the use of box-like structures, and whilst it probably wouldn't help against a direct hit, it would certainly cut down on shrapnel damage.