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The panzer book is one I need
Note that the book's value is in the museum photographs and not the captions as they are plain wrong when it comes to important parts of the vehicle's history. Knowing that the photographs are of museum items also means one must compare them to period images. A much better book, to use in conjunction with this one, would be Panzer Tracts volume on the Jagdpanzers. Errors noted include naming the topfblende as the Saukopf. This is a pet peeve of mine first started by Spielberger in his German language description of some StuGIII with what he thought were boar's heads.
While the shape does fit the Boar's head, it was not a name given to it by troops or industry. This unit marked their topfblende equipped StuG III as Mammoths, trumpeting ones at that.
Another that stuck out at me is naming the deep rimmed road wheels as a late feature since they appear on a museum display. Sheer ignorance as looking at all the vehicle's road wheels and comparing it to the information the author had access shows an inability to deduce a correct sequence. The Jagdpanzer 38 suspension was based on that of the PzKpfw 38(t) and the road wheel disks are considered part of the armor protection. However, the road wheels of the tank are smaller (775mm) than those of the tank hunter (825mm). It should be obvious that a deep rimmed wheel would be needed to match up to the smaller disk.
The above road wheel belonged to Chwat, the captured JgdPz 38 used by the Poles during the uprising.
When production of the larger disks started, a shallow rimmed wheel was used, still with 32 bolts:
Read the gibberish caption. Not an early feature.
Then production cut the fasteners by half using rivets instead of bolts:
More gibberish:
Postwar, the wheels didn't last long so welds were added as a feature (used on G-13 vehicles from which many "Jagdpanzer 38" in museums and reenactments originate).
Can't say I recommend the text...
James, I posted a look see for the MT-LB.
Regards,
