DogDodger

Good eye. In order to not stray from this topic, I've posted some pics and a video here.

Some shots and footage of the Americans in Wartime Museum's EFV automotive test rig:

Going a bit old school in Virginia over the weekend:

Preordered.

Neat cargo-holder fabrication or whatever they've done on the deck. If I had to guess, though, I'd go with M4A2 since the rear armor looks to dip down further that an M4's and it looks like it has the water and oil filler caps associated with an M4A2. Jeeps?

Agree on M4(105), at least; it looks to have the grouser compartment air scoop between the lifting hook and taillight on the rear deck.

Jeeps, I know it's a heckuva way from CA, but the Armor and Cavalry Collection is doing open houses at Benning monthly for the next few months, and you might like some of what they have to see.

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.

The four jettisonable 55 gal fuel drums mounted on the rear deck increased the tank's range to about...135 miles.

Thanks. If you speak to Mr. DiNardo again, please tell him he owes me twelve bucks. PayPal is acceptable. ;)

It has precedent.

Stole this picture of an interesting jigsaw puzzle from a Sherman Facebook group.

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.

Looks like the collector ring box, but upside-down.

I'd guess Lima Locomotive Works, which was the first factory in production in February 1942. The fixed hull MGs were eliminated in March 1942. Pacific Car and Foundry didn't begin production until May, and their first production tanks had the holes for these MGs welded shut. Pressed Steel Car Co. began production in March and its earliest tanks had the bow MG holes, but their early tanks also featured riveted lower hulls, which it looks like this tank lacks. Also, assembling tanks in a vest, tie, and fedora is classy as a sonofagun.

Well this is interesting. Perhaps D51045 is a subcomponent of the turret hatch assembly rather than the part number for the entire assembly itself. SNL G-104 from 1 August 1945 for the M4, M4A1, and M4(105) does indeed call D51050 the turret hatch race ring for "first type hatch, M4, M4A1." However, what is D51045 in the picture is listed instead as part number D78013: It's tough to tell if the periscope door in your picture is D51027 or D51047, but the latter part number is listed in the M4, M4A1, and M4(105) SNL as "DOOR, turret hatch, w PERISCOPE OPENING (first type hatch)." If we assume that the picture does indeed show D51047, that's a bit of corroborating evidence, and the other door might be 51049. In the first entry on this page of the Sherman Minutia Website, we can see that there was a change introduced to the first split-hatch cupola design that resulted in a physical change to the ring, so maybe the different part numbers are related to this? But bottom line, D51045 doesn't show up in either of the SNLs I have that detail the split-hatch TC's cupola, so this is conjecture on my part at this point. Does it show up in any of your references, Jeeps?

Sorry, Jeeps, I've had it forever and I think the site where I got it has shut down. Back in the day there was a guy, IIRC linked from the AFV News site, who was making copies of manuals and selling them. I forget his name and his site, but he actually did a good job: good quality copies as you can see above, spiral-bound with plastic covers (the thicker ones are three-hole bound, which allows for easy removal and scanning of pages). He had Canadian and British manuals as well.

SNL G-104 for the M4A4 from 29 July 1943 shows a light switch that looks pretty similar: After messing around a bit with the warning plate for the blackout switch, I've come up with Pulling on the switch activated the blackout marker and taillights and blackout stoplight; to get to the second (service headlights and blackout stop light) or third (service stop lights with no other lights) detents you had to press the locking button on the left as you pulled the switch. Not much help, but it may be a start. Edit: The last line may be "1ST STAGE - BLACK-OUT"?

I think the early suspension bogies point to it being an M4A2. The heavy-duty bogies were introduced by summer 1942, and the M4A2 was the only welded-hull tank in production before then. The first M4A3, which was the next welded-hull variant to be introduced, had the heavy-duty bogies.

Ehh, with that resolution and angle I'd (at least) consider it to be pretty difficult, but it looks like it might have air scoops on the rear hull? If so it would probably be an M4. Jeeps?

This by chance? MG Barnes's order posted there notes that "there is a War Department Circular forbidding the use of nicknames in official and technical correspondence. The objective of this order involves public information channels only"

Befehlspanzer?

Production there continued until the second quarter of 1945 according to Stansell and Laughlin.

Front sprocket and the driver's on the wrong side, though. Related to the Type 61?

This drawing is pretty mysterious, depending on how specific and accurate we think it might be. The M4A1 drawing features the air scoops/grouser compartments on the rear of the hull and the welded hull does not, which might indicate it's an M4A3 and not an M4 or M4A2. Like Jeeps mentioned, the presence of engine compartment doors would seemingly eliminate the M4A2, but might they be a little wide for an M4A3, since its aperture was constrained by exhaust pipes on either side? Also, the rear hull armor appears to go straight across at the sponson line, which would typically eliminate both the M4A2 and M4A3. So it seems to simultaneously combine and lack features of all the large hatch welded hull tanks?