What is Reddit's opinion of Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II?

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>Way to build a strawman, says everything that needs to be known regarding the rest of your post.

Of course I'm going to include the single most famous example of good read but bad history. And you're just going to ignore the memoirs that have widly influenced our understanding of the war?

Books are valid sources but they are not gospel and some of them can be fake or so narrow in scope as to be false. Just because it hits the printers doesn't mean it's automatically better than everything else and should be scrutinized and independently verified like anything else.

I read a book recently called Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II.

It's quite a good read. The author was actually involved in putting together the super pershing.

Logistics:

Death traps: Survival of an American Armored Division in WWII by Belton Cooper

A must read for any Ordnance guy who wants some pride in their branch. Its an autobiographical account written by Belton Cooper, a Maintenance Officer during the advance towards Berlin across western europe. Great read of WW2 on the ground tactics, cool stories of a WW2 Loggie Officer (which may seem hard to believe, but seriously some cool shit), and some takes on tank warfare from a maintenance perspective. Cooper gets really critical of eisenhower though on not implementing the pershing tank sooner.

https://www.amazon.com/Death-Traps-Survival-American-Division/dp/0891418148

In the book Death Traps, it's mentioned that it was typical for the Germans to not stop firing on a tank until it was on fire. This was Vs the Americans anyways.

So it could be a tank from an actual battle.

A while ago, I read "Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in WW2" which a lot of that movie was based on.

Apparently that scene is based on an actual event. The only difference is that is wasn't the Waffen SS, it was one surviving Lt. that did all the fighting, and he survived by shutting the hatch and locking it until friendlies came to recover the tank.

Crazy read though. Gave me an whole new view on what a meat grinder the European front was.

The ending scene is based off a real event where a shot up tank was found surrounded by dozens of dead German soldiers. Except the tank gunner was alive.

https://www.amazon.com/Death-Traps-Survival-American-Division/dp/0891418148

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Unit cohesion and discipline routinely break down in war, especially 1945 Germany where most German units would've been surrounded and cut off from retreat so you would have isolated battalions who would keep fighting or mass surrender if you are lucky.

During the Korean war American units routinely fought isolated actions separated from assistance. Its one of the main learning curves of that war they had to grapple with.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0891418148/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fabc_Q6F6C4EA5STEV0PXEQ7F

Lowest bidder. All fun aside, if you come across a soldier or retired guy and have a dozen hours of free time, ask them about the bad design choices of military hardware. Pretty common that things that wouldn't pass as safe for vehicles/equipment in the civilian world are allowed to exist in the military. There's a book about it for WW2 era stuff. Nothing has really changed.

Hell, the Humvee was a known death trap for over a decade before the body count in Iraq forced the military to try to retrofit them.

Read Death Traps, by Belton Cooper.
https://www.amazon.com/Death-Traps-Survival-American-Division/dp/0891418148
He was an armor maintenance officer with 3rd AD in WWII.

Despite this being a repost with no source or credit to the picture, the description is not accurate, the SS - 501st HPB has never seen combat in western Europe, but on the Eastern Front and the North African Campaign

Also, around Stavelot (Francorchamps) was the location of the famous massive German fuel dump, held as an absolute secret until the allied units found out about as a result of the rapid advance to cut the German supplies short. What the Germans really did not want, was to draw attention to that area and to keep the intel hidden, which means that combat was far away from there at La Gleize and its surroundings.

Reference: Death Traps from Belton Y. Cooper (with a foreword by Stephen Ambrose) - Chapter: The Battle of the Bulge: Phase 1 - Page 182

Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II https://www.amazon.com/dp/0891418148/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_i_T3VV3SD2YXZB8WYB077K

The last stand of the crew of the disabled Fury appears to be based on an anecdote from Death Traps, wherein a lone tanker was "in his tank on a road junction" when a "German infantry unit approached, apparently not spotting the tank in the darkness". This unnamed tanker is said to have ricocheted shells into the enemy forces, fired all of his machine gun ammunition, and thrown grenades to kill German soldiers climbing onto the tank. Cooper concluded: "When our infantry arrived the next day, they found the brave young tanker still alive in his tank. The entire surrounding area was littered with German dead and wounded."[35]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fury\_(2014\_film)#Portrayal\_of\_history

https://www.amazon.com/Death-Traps-Survival-American-Division/dp/0891418148

The last stand of the crew of the disabled Fury appears to be based on an anecdote from Death Traps, wherein a lone tanker was "in his tank on a road junction" when a "German infantry unit approached, apparently not spotting the tank in the darkness". This unnamed tanker is said to have ricocheted shells into the enemy forces, fired all of his machine gun ammunition, and thrown grenades to kill German soldiers climbing onto the tank. Cooper concluded: "When our infantry arrived the next day, they found the brave young tanker still alive in his tank. The entire surrounding area was littered with German dead and wounded."[35]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fury_(2014_film)#Portrayal_of_history

https://www.amazon.com/Death-Traps-Survival-American-Division/dp/0891418148

"Life & Death on a Tank - Tank Crews Documentary"

Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II

Let me guess... This one? Most of it is pretty inaccurate. Don't believe everything he says.

Check this out instead.

I read it in this.

I read it in this.