.
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by Ian Baxter.
Subtitle: Images of War
Softcover (6.7×9.7 inches). 108 pages. 2025.
After the conquest of Poland, the Germans decided they needed additional mobility and firepower and came up with the idea of PanzerJager (self-propelled AT guns) and Flakpanzer (self-propelled AA guns) to keep up with the panzers. First efforts were generally quick and dirty conversions using PzI and PzII chassis with AT guns and halftrack-mounted AA guns.
As the war continued, so did development of heavier guns on heavier chassis until they came out with the Elefant and JagdTiger as well as quad 20mm AA and single 37mm AA guns on halftracks. The STuG became the star of self-propelled assault guns pressed into AT service.
Yet a couple of vehicles were new to me, which is always a pleasure to
find. The Dicker Max 10.5cm K18 mounted a 105mm gun on a PzIV chassis, but had limited traverse and threw up huge dust clouds when it fired (p36-39).
Also, the 12.8cm Selbstfahrlefette VK 30.01 (H) had only two models built, named Max and Moritz after storybook characters (p78). Max was lost in battle and Moritz was captured at Stalingrad.
Two typos: “three-man crew…driver along with the radio operator…the loader was located next to the commander” (p9). That’s four crewmen.
The list of vehicles refers to the altered French tank as 35R (p107), but the captions refer to the tank as R35 (such as on p26). Other than those, the text and captions seem pretty clean.
Yet the photos are what draws folks to the series and this book contains 142 black and white photos and generally good quality. I can’t decide which would be my favorite: a line of Jagdpanthers on the march across fields (p86) for the spacing aspect, or, the 88mm AT gun mounted on a halftrack set up to fire and the crew peering into the distance (p16) along with two motorcycle riders. A pair of photos would be a tie for third because they need to be seen together — a proper winter camouflage paint job on a halftrack (p60) and a half-assed winter camouflage paint job on a Wirblewind (p61).
A nice, tight book.
Enjoyed it.
— Reviewed by Russ Lockwood
