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Sturgeon's House

Letters to ARMOR magazine


Walter_Sobchak

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One of my favorite things about going through the old back issues of ARMOR magazine is reading the letters to the editor. Sometimes you find ones by well known figures in the armor community, sometimes you find stuff by veterans.  I will start the thread with this exchange from 1987.  In the Sept-Oct issue, there is a lengthy letter by a LTC Kingsbury about deficiencies of WWII US tanks.  This letter is quite interesting as it contains several well worn myths concerning US Armor in WWII.  I'm not posting this as a criticism of LTC Kingsbury, for all I know he was an exemplary soldier.  I'm sure he honestly believed everything he wrote in this letter.  The issue is that some of his statements are just not true, as shown by postwar research and scholarship.  This is a pretty good example of how things can look a certain way to the people in the middle of something, while being quite different when viewed from a higher perspective.  I have also included two letters in response to LTC Kingsbury which appeared in the Nov-Dec issue.  

 

 

WWII%2Btank%2Bdeficiencies.jpg

 

Shermans%2Bcould%2Bdo%2Bthe%2Bjob.jpg

 

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Here is a letter from the Jan-Feb 1991 issue.  It's in response to a not particularly good article on US WWII tanks.  Anyhow, this writer has nothing good to say about US WWII armor. He also is a former maintenance guy from the 3rd Armored Division.  I wonder if he was buddies with Belton Cooper?  Also, it's rather amusing to hear him complain about fixing the suspension on an M4 sherman while praising the German Panther.  Obviously, he probably never had to deal with the overlapping road wheel and dual torsion bar madness that is the Panther suspension.  

 

 

Jan-feb%2B1991%2Bletter.jpg

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