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It's from this article by the_chieftain about Panthers in French service after the war.

> In truth a tanker could ask for much more. The Panther’s story is rife with examples of automotive problems. The combat debut of the Panther, during the great German Kursk offensive in 1943 (Operation Citadel), was not particularly auspicious. Two tanks from the initial detachment burned out from engine fires just getting off of the trains! It brought a whole new meaning to the phrase “baptism of fire”.

The porous fuel lines resulted in incendiary fumes building up in the engine compartment after some time of inactivity like on an flatbed. When the engine was started it could ignite these fumes and the tank burned.

Germany (and other nations) used trains whenever possible as the could transport huge loads fast. It also reduced the wear on the tanks.

Also from the article:

> As a result, the Panther is in no way a strategic tank. The Germans did not hesitate to economically increase the engine life by loading the tank onto railcars ­ even for very short distances (25 km).

Source : https://www.moddb.com/members/taranov/images/type-97-shinhoto-chi-ha-medium-tank-shumshu

Type 97 Shinhoto Chi-Ha Medium Tank from 11-th tank regiment, knocked out 18 august 1945, 14:30-15:00 (local time). Have two hits in front side of turret (one pierce), but it's not a critical damage. Critical hits - 3 holes in rear turret hatch, including one hit in rear turret ammunition rack, and... All hits by AT rifles.

One of the photos was posted about a year ago, however I have found more info and another color photo of this Tiger with an American truck passing it.

This Tiger was from Schwere Panzer Abteilung 508 as they withdrew from Eastern Italy. It was photographed on Poggibonsi Road (Highway 6), 20 miles south of Florence.

"By 3 June 1944, a general fighting withdrawal to the Trasimene Line began as the Allies pressed northward, taking Rome the next day. Thirteen Tigers were lost moving towards Poggibonsi on 13 June, mostly destroyed by their crews. Two more were lost in action against five enemy tanks near Chiusdino on 27 June. On 4 July one Tiger fell into a cellar near Colle di Val d'Elsa; it was destroyed as unrecoverable. Six Shermans were destroyed near Tavarnelle on 8 July"

source: http://www.wikiwand.com/en/508th_Heavy_Panzer_Battalion

“Shutting our eyes to the complexities of race does not make them disappear but does make it harder to see that color blindness often creates more problems than it solves.” - Racial Color Blindness

No reason to be sorry. From a top level perspective, the 17 pounder has a slightly more massive AP projectile than that of the 3 inch cannon (7.7kg vs 7kg), and substantially larger propellent charge. This resulted in superior raw armor penetration performance, at the cost of system size.

Nicholas Moran (Wargaming's the Chieftain) penned a detailed report on the US Army's assessment comparing the 17 lber and the 76.2mm M1 cannon (similar to the M10's 3 inch gun). https://worldoftanks.com/en/news/chieftain/chieftains-hatch-us-guns-vs-german-armour-part-1/

Riveting read, thanks for taking the trouble to type it out!

(Next time, Online OCR!)

At 850 yards the 2 pounder would have been able to penetrate at least 30mm of armor at a good angle, which would have given it a fair chance against the Panzer III. At the time the latter would have been equipped with the 5cm KwK 38 L/42 with slightly better penetration, more than enough to penetrate the relatively poor armor of the Cruisers during this period.

I will correct it to how it is listed in the Encyclopedia of German Tanks of World War Two

Interestingly the 17pdr was not without it's trade offs:

It took longer to load when mounted inside the sherman turret and created far more smoke when fired which made it much more difficult for the gunner to correct their shot.

The Chieftain does a great write up of the trade offs between the guns sighting finding from period testing. https://worldoftanks.com/en/news/chieftain/The_Chieftains_Hatch_Firefly/

IIRC those were not destroyed in combat but rather afterwards by retreating Russian troops, I've seen other pictures of those, maybe I'll find the story if I dig around a bit.

UPDATE: This source claims those were destroyed post-war by units of 42nd Motor Rifle Division, its a pretty well done materiel, but I cannot vouch for authenticity. This (https://vk.com/topic-1322500_27102327) is sort of an updated post with a little more images. You can understand whats what if you run it through google translate.

Regarding your AV vs B question then the (integral) armor is the same. The difference is in the number of ERA blocks, some people would argue that less ERA units on B model have a worst layout, while others claim that it' just an optimization of a wasteful AV layout.

Don’t forget the Chinese Labour Corps brought to Europe during WW1.

There is a good book about it: https://www.amazon.ca/Strangers-Western-Front-Guoqi-Xu-ebook/dp/B005CN3G7E/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=strangers+on+the+western+front&qid=1617725836&sr=8-2

I think that must have been Loza's memoir. It's a bit limited in scope since it's a memoir and all, but still worth a read. The only other work that goes into any depth on the topic is my book that I will shamelessly promote ;)

The book is 544 pages long and very well researched and written providing a day to day account of the fighting.

https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Bulge-Then-Jean-Paul-Pallud/dp/0900913401/ref=sr\_1\_1?crid=2RIZNOKHTVPXF&keywords=battle+of+the+bulge+then+and+now+book&qid=1641084236&sprefix=battle+of+the+bulge+then+and+now+book%2Caps%2C223&sr=8-1

> the myth that they couldn't drive for more than 150km came from post-war tests by the french, who didn't know how to correctly use them and weren't trained to so they more or less abused them which caused wear to increase a whole lot and thus limiting the max range alot.

Do you have any sources on that? They used them for a couple of years, it wouldn't make sense to do so without actually knowing how to use them lol.

Here's some links

There was a pretty good reason why they ran out of spare parts that quickly.

> The truly weak spot of the Panther is its final drive, which is of too weak a design and has an average fatigue life of only 150 km.

The claim that the Panther was reliable by the end of the war is patently false.

Bruh.

This is basically what I said: Good (frontal) armor, good gun. Adds the good optics means it's a great long-range tank-killer.

However, the drive systems sucked.

It was more of a TD than an MBT.

It's apparently sourced from this book, according to wiki as far as the Soviet-Afghan conflict, for use in pillboxes and roadblocks. Which I don't see why not, as it is still a armored machine gun in a turret. The turret and front-arc should still be resistant to anything up to .50BMG AP rounds.

Yes...? The whole series is based on and around the real-life actions of real men who fought in Europe.

The book "Band of Brothers" is a very good read if you get the time.

https://www.amazon.com/Band-Brothers-Regiment-Airborne-Normandy/dp/074322454X

Can recommend the title The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan which consists of a series of first person accounts and vignettes of young Soviet combat officer accounts during the 1979-89 Soviet War in Afghanistan

https://www.amazon.com/Bear-Went-Over-Mountain-Afghanistan/dp/1304069451

I read this wonderful German book about the development of the Leopard 2: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00SB5LXP2/

I cannot look up the quote, because I don't have the book where I am right now. But I remember that the time to do maintenance and the time to change the complete engine of a Soviet tank (I think he compared the Leopard 2 to a T-72) was significantly higher (hundreds to thousand running hours) to a Western tank. I think he also wrote that the GDR had training tanks and non-training tanks to avoid breakdowns of all tanks in case of a conflict. It was a complete different design principle.

I'm taking this from "American Tanks and AFVS of World War II" by Michael Green, which quotes a USMC report titled Armoured Operations on Iwo Jima dated March 16, 1945.

> The enemy practice of tying aerial bombs to a yard stick mine is an expensive method of mining. Their policy is to completely demolish the mine as distinguished from the German policy of merely stopping the tank with the mine and destroying it by gunfire

I was going from memory, which explains why I added "Torpedo warheads" to the list of things used to boost AT mines - I don't have any evidence of that happening, so feel free to disregard that part.

Okay it has taken me several days but I read your report which was a very well written opinion piece that in no way refuted anything that I said in my first post. In fact it pretty much backed up everything I said. China was defeated in several battles very badly and routed in some of them all while receiving massive casualties. I also read the Naval post graduate report which states pretty much the direct opposite of the report above. It suggests that China wanted to occupy northern Vietnam and when they saw that it would be to costly the smartly withdrew and moved their goal posts by stating that their objectives had been met. I bought this book on amazon kindle and read it as well and it totally disagrees with the assessment of the report that you posted. https://www.amazon.com/Deng-Xiaopings-Long-War-1979-1991/dp/146962124X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1515163488&sr=1-1&keywords=Deng+Xiaoping%E2%80%99s+Long+War+%E2%80%93+The+Military+Conflict+between+China+and+Vietnam+1979-1...

I have found the source for the A lock that wore out the gear on the gun http://www.amazon.com/Jagdtiger-Design-Production-Operations-Tech/dp/9185657018 page 100.

The quote of the aligning of the gun came from another book, I think it was from Otto Carius autbiography, Tigers in slamm but I'll check!

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

Check this out instead.