Walter_Sobchak Posted March 17, 2018 Report Share Posted March 17, 2018 1 hour ago, Jeeps_Guns_Tanks said: Man, That AMPS review of Djons book warms my heard. Oh man, I had not seen that before. Here is the link. http://www.amps-armor.org/SiteReviews/ShowReview.aspx?ID=4114 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walter_Sobchak Posted March 18, 2018 Report Share Posted March 18, 2018 Donward, Jamby and Laviduce 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walter_Sobchak Posted April 1, 2018 Report Share Posted April 1, 2018 Anyone familiar with this author? https://www.amazon.com/Tanks-Operation-Barbarossa-Soviet-Eastern/dp/1473886805/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1522582011&sr=1-11&keywords=tanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeeps_Guns_Tanks Posted April 1, 2018 Report Share Posted April 1, 2018 His name is Boris, so he's probably legit! EnsignExpendable 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xlucine Posted April 1, 2018 Report Share Posted April 1, 2018 Quote Boris Kavalerchik is a mechanical engineer from the USSR who served as an officer in the Soviet armed forces reserve before emigrating to the United States. Sounds like a decent chap Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EnsignExpendable Posted April 14, 2018 Author Report Share Posted April 14, 2018 On 01/04/2018 at 7:33 AM, Walter_Sobchak said: Anyone familiar with this author? https://www.amazon.com/Tanks-Operation-Barbarossa-Soviet-Eastern/dp/1473886805/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1522582011&sr=1-11&keywords=tanks From a brief overview of his books they seem a bit sensationalist and more analytical than technical (even though he is an engineer), but he also opposes Suvorov/Rezun, so that's something. I can't find what book this is supposed to be translated from, it might be an adaptation of "June 1941: a pre-programmed defeat". Xlucine and That_Baka 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Collimatrix Posted April 30, 2018 Report Share Posted April 30, 2018 I just got my copy of Ken Estes' new book on German heavy tanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walter_Sobchak Posted April 30, 2018 Report Share Posted April 30, 2018 3 hours ago, Collimatrix said: I just got my copy of Ken Estes' new book on German heavy tanks. I got my copy at the beginning of last week. Been working on my video review. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EnsignExpendable Posted June 3, 2018 Author Report Share Posted June 3, 2018 Rummaged through some bins at the local hobby shop and picked up a pair of books. Well, booklets really, but the photos were nice. Lots of colour plates of Sherman tanks in North Africa. Lord_James 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeeps_Guns_Tanks Posted June 3, 2018 Report Share Posted June 3, 2018 Nice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walter_Sobchak Posted June 4, 2018 Report Share Posted June 4, 2018 I guess I forgot to post my review of Ken Estes book on German Heavy Tanks. This video features me in my full beard mode. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EnsignExpendable Posted August 18, 2018 Author Report Share Posted August 18, 2018 Two more fine additions to my collection. These are just collections of documents, but pertaining to the designers behind the T-34 tank (Koshkin and Morozov) more so than the vehicle itself. Also photos, but the photos are not very high quality. Walter_Sobchak 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walter_Sobchak Posted September 5, 2018 Report Share Posted September 5, 2018 Got my review copy of "Professor Porsche's Wars" yesterday. Looks like it's got some interesting stuff in it. EnsignExpendable 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Collimatrix Posted September 22, 2018 Report Share Posted September 22, 2018 I picked up Sabot Publications books on the M60A2, both volume 1 and volume 2. The books are mostly aimed at modelers and consist mainly of exterior shots of the tanks on exercise in Germany. However, there are also some interior shots, and a bit of technical discussion of the vehicles. The authors are also quite emphatic from interviews with former crew that, while the tank was in service, nobody called it a "starship!" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZloyKrolik Posted September 22, 2018 Report Share Posted September 22, 2018 When I was in C Co 1/70 AR (1983-84), my platoon sergeant told us that when he was a SGT, he was a gunner on an M60A2. He said that the FCS was quite accurate, but a maintenance nightmare. If it worked, it was great. Belesarius and Jeeps_Guns_Tanks 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Collimatrix Posted September 22, 2018 Report Share Posted September 22, 2018 Per the Sabot Publications book, the M60A2 was called "A2" or "A Deuce." One crewmember recalls calling them "stump" while M60A1s were "needledicks." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeeps_Guns_Tanks Posted September 22, 2018 Report Share Posted September 22, 2018 6 hours ago, Collimatrix said: Per the Sabot Publications book, the M60A2 was called "A2" or "A Deuce." One crewmember recalls calling them "stump" while M60A1s were "needledicks." They should have called it the Elephantiasis! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EnsignExpendable Posted October 18, 2018 Author Report Share Posted October 18, 2018 The local university had a book sale, so I basically swept up everything with as much as the word "tank" in it off the military history table. But wait, there's more. Zoom, enhance! These books bound in red cloth are each worth as much as the rest of that stack combined. They're official histories of the Canadian army, published only a few years after the war with the backing of the Department of National Defense. As a result they have amazing photographs and maps actually drawn by military cartographers. And the best part is that since they've been printed 70 years ago, so they're all out of copyright Xlucine, Jeeps_Guns_Tanks, LoooSeR and 2 others 3 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeeps_Guns_Tanks Posted October 19, 2018 Report Share Posted October 19, 2018 That's a nice haul! Gotta love old books like that! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EnsignExpendable Posted November 12, 2018 Author Report Share Posted November 12, 2018 Massive dump of Osprey titles. https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=!AMYz3if1JzhRhYo&id=DC4F263A5A0865AB!24731&cid=DC4F263A5A0865AB Stimpy75 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DogDodger Posted January 11, 2019 Report Share Posted January 11, 2019 Just got through Guderian: Panzer Pioneer or Myth Maker? by Russell A. Hart. I was looking forward to reading it; the introduction says the book "seeks the real Heinz Guderian, not the man of legend." I was expecting a short but interesting insight into how Guderian inflated his accomplishments, much like Bond and Mearsheimer had done with Liddell Hart (and which Gat later attempted to redress). No less than Richard DiNardo proffered a decently glowing review of the book that concluded with, "This monograph is certainly not the definitive biography of Guderian, and I do not think the author had that goal in mind. As a corrective to one of the more mendacious memoirs of the Second World War, Hart's work clearly hits the mark." Looking good! As it turns out, the book is a hot mess. It consists of surprisingly repetitious (and it's only 118pp), scantily-researched, poorly-evidenced, and thesaurus-driven prose that does little to convince the reader of the author's arguments unless the reader is fine with simply taking his word on things. (Of course, with the way things go on social media, this may not be an issue...). The third sentence in the introduction is, "Unfortunately, too many of Guderian's biographers have accepted Guderian's view of his accomplishments without sufficient critical scrutiny." In the endnote for this sentence Hart mentions seven such hagiographies, including two editions of Macksey's book on Guderian, Panzer General and Creator of the Blitzkreig. From this strong start, I thought with glee, clearly Hart will offer some hard-hitting, original research using novel sources! Oh. Hart's main sources are the biographies he accused of insufficient critical scrutiny in the third sentence of his book. Hart consistently makes assertions and accusations with no supporting examples, and often with even no citation. Some of this stuff I even believed going in, but if I had disagreed I would not be convinced by Hart simply saying so. E.g., people now realize Lutz had a large hand in forming the German armored forces. Hart agrees, stating. "It was Lutz more than Guderian who transformed the Mobile Troops Command into a strong, coherent branch in the late 1930s. Quietly, with much less fuss and rancor than Guderian was raising, Lutz negotiated, cajoled, listened, and compromised to push forward his command more effectively than Guderian ever could have done." What negotiations and compromises actually occurred are, like many things in the book, left to the reader's imagination. Hart later says that "Guderian despised the Catholic, Slavic Poles who now [in 1939] occupied parts of his native, beloved Prussia." This is not provided with any citation or evidence. It's not that I wouldn't believe such a statement, but I would expect some evidence to accompany its presentation. Hart later says that during the French invasion, "In his private correspondence, Guderian expressed compassion for the plight of the French populace. This demonstrated that he held the 'civilized' French in much higher regard than he did the Slavic Poles." So I guess that's the evidence? Again, not that I wouldn't believe it, but that connection seems a bit of a stretch. Likewise, Hart says that during the Polish invasion Guderian "earned the enmity of many a senior officer whose command prerogatives Guderian carelessly and thoughtlessly trampled over. For example, Guderian soon found himself at odds with the 3d Panzer Division commander--Freiherr Geyr von Schweppenburg--another future rising star of the armored force." What prerogatives were trampled, what odds occurred, and how those odds were resolved are not mentioned. A fourth example: "Largely as a result of Guderian's insistence, these [Hummel and Wespe] were produced only in limited numbers, sufficient at best to equip a single battalion in each panzer artillery regiment during 1943-5. The lack of self-propelled guns reflected Guderian's opposition to diverting resources and production capacity to artillery weapons and his firm prewar belief that only tanks could fight other tanks effectively." This cites pp.216-22 in Panzer Leader. Unfortunately, my edition is apparently paginated differently, because there is nothing in those pages in my copy that talks about Guderian's opposition to SP arty. I did find where Guderian laid out the notes he took to his 9 March 1943 conference with Hitler et al after becoming Inspector-General of Armored Troops, which included "9.The artillery of the panzer and motorized divisions will from now on be receiving the adequate number of self-propelled gun-carriages which has been requested for the past 10 years...Tanks of latest design must be supplied for artillery observers." A final example of evidenceless assertions for this post, but by no means final in the book: "[Guderian's] response to that trend [of the SS and Nazi party gaining influence and threatening taking over the army in 1944] was to more strongly identify himself and the armored troops with the national socialist worldview and agenda." No citation, no elaboration on how Guderian identified the armored troops with the Nazi worldview and agend, or even what that means, really. Hart can't seem to decide how well Guderian performs as far as politics and influencing others. He variously describes him as having "political naiveté" (p.90), being "a consummate political operator" (p.92) who "continuously politicked" (p.93) those in Hitler's sphere, who executed a "calculated political neutrality" (p.102) after the assassination attempt on Hitler, yet who was again "a political neophyte" (p.115) who was "politically naive" (p.117). This list starts at p.90 only because that's when I bothered to start keeping track. It exists throughout the book. I generally like historical scholarship and biographies to take a decently even-handed approach, but Hart makes no attempt to hide his bias with word choice, time and again throwing out strings of adjectives full of negative connotation: "More than anything else, it was his repeated, insolent defiance of higher authority, his insatiable and threatening demands for more of everything, his inability to understand the needs of other commands or act as a team player, combined with his inability to finesse his superiors, that cost Guderian his appointment." Jeez, say how you really feel. So, in sum, I was disappointed. I went into this book believing that Guderian made more of himself than he should have re: the formation of German armored forces, but Hart did little to convince me had I not already thought so. The book is not all bad (I hadn't heard of the bribes Hitler gave to senior officers, but this research is not original to Hart, who cites others' work), but it's shallow and I feel it's not very good scholarship, especially from a history professor and PhD-holder who specializes "in the history of the Second World War in the European Theater." At least it was only like $12. Walter_Sobchak, Bronezhilet and Xlucine 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walter_Sobchak Posted January 12, 2019 Report Share Posted January 12, 2019 On 1/11/2019 at 2:14 AM, DogDodger said: Just got through Guderian: Panzer Pioneer or Myth Maker? by Russell A. Hart. I was looking forward to reading it; the introduction says the book "seeks the real Heinz Guderian, not the man of legend." I was expecting a short but interesting insight into how Guderian inflated his accomplishments, much like Bond and Mearsheimer had done with Liddell Hart (and which Gat later attempted to redress). No less than Richard DiNardo proffered a decently glowing review of the book that concluded with, "This monograph is certainly not the definitive biography of Guderian, and I do not think the author had that goal in mind. As a corrective to one of the more mendacious memoirs of the Second World War, Hart's work clearly hits the mark." Looking good! As it turns out, the book is a hot mess. It consists of surprisingly repetitious (and it's only 118pp), scantily-researched, poorly-evidenced, and thesaurus-driven prose that does little to convince the reader of the author's arguments unless the reader is fine with simply taking his word on things. (Of course, with the way things go on social media, this may not be an issue...). The third sentence in the introduction is, "Unfortunately, too many of Guderian's biographers have accepted Guderian's view of his accomplishments without sufficient critical scrutiny." In the endnote for this sentence Hart mentions seven such hagiographies, including two editions of Macksey's book on Guderian, Panzer General and Creator of the Blitzkreig. From this strong start, I thought with glee, clearly Hart will offer some hard-hitting, original research using novel sources! Oh. Hart's main sources are the biographies he accused of insufficient critical scrutiny in the third sentence of his book. Hart consistently makes assertions and accusations with no supporting examples, and often with even no citation. Some of this stuff I even believed going in, but if I had disagreed I would not be convinced by Hart simply saying so. E.g., people now realize Lutz had a large hand in forming the German armored forces. Hart agrees, stating. "It was Lutz more than Guderian who transformed the Mobile Troops Command into a strong, coherent branch in the late 1930s. Quietly, with much less fuss and rancor than Guderian was raising, Lutz negotiated, cajoled, listened, and compromised to push forward his command more effectively than Guderian ever could have done." What negotiations and compromises actually occurred are, like many things in the book, left to the reader's imagination. Hart later says that "Guderian despised the Catholic, Slavic Poles who now [in 1939] occupied parts of his native, beloved Prussia." This is not provided with any citation or evidence. It's not that I wouldn't believe such a statement, but I would expect some evidence to accompany its presentation. Hart later says that during the French invasion, "In his private correspondence, Guderian expressed compassion for the plight of the French populace. This demonstrated that he held the 'civilized' French in much higher regard than he did the Slavic Poles." So I guess that's the evidence? Again, not that I wouldn't believe it, but that connection seems a bit of a stretch. Likewise, Hart says that during the Polish invasion Guderian "earned the enmity of many a senior officer whose command prerogatives Guderian carelessly and thoughtlessly trampled over. For example, Guderian soon found himself at odds with the 3d Panzer Division commander--Freiherr Geyr von Schweppenburg--another future rising star of the armored force." What prerogatives were trampled, what odds occurred, and how those odds were resolved are not mentioned. A fourth example: "Largely as a result of Guderian's insistence, these [Hummel and Wespe] were produced only in limited numbers, sufficient at best to equip a single battalion in each panzer artillery regiment during 1943-5. The lack of self-propelled guns reflected Guderian's opposition to diverting resources and production capacity to artillery weapons and his firm prewar belief that only tanks could fight other tanks effectively." This cites pp.216-22 in Panzer Leader. Unfortunately, my edition is apparently paginated differently, because there is nothing in those pages in my copy that talks about Guderian's opposition to SP arty. I did find where Guderian laid out the notes he took to his 9 March 1943 conference with Hitler et al after becoming Inspector-General of Armored Troops, which included "9.The artillery of the panzer and motorized divisions will from now on be receiving the adequate number of self-propelled gun-carriages which has been requested for the past 10 years...Tanks of latest design must be supplied for artillery observers." A final example of evidenceless assertions for this post, but by no means final in the book: "[Guderian's] response to that trend [of the SS and Nazi party gaining influence and threatening taking over the army in 1944] was to more strongly identify himself and the armored troops with the national socialist worldview and agenda." No citation, no elaboration on how Guderian identified the armored troops with the Nazi worldview and agend, or even what that means, really. Hart can't seem to decide how well Guderian performs as far as politics and influencing others. He variously describes him as having "political naiveté" (p.90), being "a consummate political operator" (p.92) who "continuously politicked" (p.93) those in Hitler's sphere, who executed a "calculated political neutrality" (p.102) after the assassination attempt on Hitler, yet who was again "a political neophyte" (p.115) who was "politically naive" (p.117). This list starts at p.90 only because that's when I bothered to start keeping track. It exists throughout the book. I generally like historical scholarship and biographies to take a decently even-handed approach, but Hart makes no attempt to hide his bias with word choice, time and again throwing out strings of adjectives full of negative connotation: "More than anything else, it was his repeated, insolent defiance of higher authority, his insatiable and threatening demands for more of everything, his inability to understand the needs of other commands or act as a team player, combined with his inability to finesse his superiors, that cost Guderian his appointment." Jeez, say how you really feel. So, in sum, I was disappointed. I went into this book believing that Guderian made more of himself than he should have re: the formation of German armored forces, but Hart did little to convince me had I not already thought so. The book is not all bad (I hadn't heard of the bribes Hitler gave to senior officers, but this research is not original to Hart, who cites others' work), but it's shallow and I feel it's not very good scholarship, especially from a history professor and PhD-holder who specializes "in the history of the Second World War in the European Theater." At least it was only like $12. Great review! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DogDodger Posted January 14, 2019 Report Share Posted January 14, 2019 On January 12, 2019 at 1:03 PM, Walter_Sobchak said: Great review! Thanks. If you speak to Mr. DiNardo again, please tell him he owes me twelve bucks. PayPal is acceptable. ;) Walter_Sobchak 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
123 Posted March 9, 2019 Report Share Posted March 9, 2019 1 Walter_Sobchak 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DogDodger Posted June 16, 2019 Report Share Posted June 16, 2019 I've had Lawrence's comically large tome on Kursk for four years or so and have just started reading it, having been previously intimidated a bit by its sheer size and scope. I mean, it has the word "Prokhorovka" on the spine...horizontally. And it weighs 12 pounds. So far, Lawrence is definitely thorough, and there are first-person accounts to balance out the archival research. I can't really form an opinion of his analysis of the battle yet since I'm only on page 359, where the actual battle begins. I'll keep everyone posted. LoooSeR, Walter_Sobchak, Collimatrix and 4 others 1 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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