Kevin Christensen

The Zaloga and Squadron books on US TDs both show pictures of 7th Army M10s being fitted with steel armour roofs. These grew out of bad experience with airbursts. According to the captions, the armour was added systematically, using a common design by the 7th Army resources, rather than in the field by crews. Those pictures happen to be of 813th TDs, which were my Dad's battalion. I've also seen a picture that my Dad took of an 813th M36 with a similar cover. (They re-outfitted with M36s after Nordwind. Many of the US TD units were comprised of artilarymen, and it was their initiative that got the TDs frequently used in indirect fire roles. They fired a lot more HE than AP, largely because the Germans really didn't have a lot of amour. TDs doing indirect fire though, would not be interesting Combat Mission. Kevin Christensen Lawrence, KS

The Ontos, the M56 Scorpion, and any light vehicle such as a HumVee or a Bradley or M113 with a TOW demonstrate affinity with the US WWII TD concepts. Some contemporary crews acknowledge the lineage by painting the Panther-Chewing-a tank TD patch on their vehicles. Some argue that Helicoptors fit the TD concept. An excellent book on the TD concept, Faint Praise: American Tanks and Tank Destroyers in WWII. Paul Baily. H.M. Coles The Battle of the Bulge includes an observation that the AARs for the conflict over and over describe TDs showing up and changing the course of combats. Like 'em or loath 'em, the US TD battalions inflicted twice the causalties at a fifth the cost of the average line unit. Adjust that for the much greater effectiveness of the SP battalions compared to towed, and it should give pause. Kevin Chrisensen Lawrence, KS

For those with an urge to Seek, Strike, and Destroy... US 18 and M 36 TDs from Yogoslavia : http://www.coldwarremarketing.com/others.asp

Panzer Elite does include infantry units,some of whom carry various AT weapons. While Wings Simulations is prevented by contratual obligations to their new investors from directly working in the 1.08 patch, they have permitted some PE fanatics to have a look. A lot of work was done before the Psygnosis debacle. I expect the patch will come in a month or so (pure speculation). However, I've found the current version very stable and satisfactory on my system. (500 Mhz Celeron, 128 Megs RAM, VooDoo3). By all accounts, the Multi-player has been fixed. The solution involves creating a new icon for Kali. Check the links at wings for details. Fan support continues. Michael Y. has just released a new version of his patch. PEDG has released a full set of British tanks, including Cromwells, Churchills, Firefly, and Achilles. Some German fans have created Elephant, Maus, and Jadgtiger models. A Russian Front Campaign is being completed. Various graphical and sound enhancements are available. Despite the steep learning curve, you can start with just a few commands. If you find it too hard, you can tweak parameters. It's deep and satisfying, and continually challening, an essential complement to Combat Mission, IMHO. The longer I play, the more stuff I try, so it stays interesting. The new sounds, models, and graphics add spice. Kevin Christensen Lawrence, KS

Panzer Elite. I see CM and PE as being extremely complementary. Both show manical attention to detail, both push the envelope of the respective niche's, both have excellent support, and are open to enhancements. I play 'em both, and haven't given much thought to anything else. Kevin Christensen Lawrence, KS

Little squares and TNT2? Sounds like something that Teut has addressed in the technical support FAQ. He runs a TNT2 himself, and I recall seeing him passing out tips that improved the display for others. I just upgraded my 500 Mhz Celeron with a VooDoo3, and saw a big jump in the fps, compared to running it with the on-board Intel chip on my HP 8560 wiht 128 Mb. I went from 5 to 8 at 1024 by 768 at long range up to 9 to 11 at long, and up to 17 at short. Panzer Elite is a tremendously immersive experience. PEDG and others have provided very cool support, including new sounds, new textures, vehicles like the British Firefly and Achilles, the German Maus and E100 and Jadgtiger. Park the Maus next to a Jadgtiger sometime. PEDG is near to releasing some Churchill and Cromwell variants. Despite Psygnosis, PE is well supported by an extraordinary group of developers and fans. Bug hunt? Hmmm. It never feels that way to me playing as the Americans. If you want total control, Combat Mission. If you want total immersiveness, Panzer Elite. If you want both, welcome to the club. Kevin Christensen Lawrence, KS

Somewhere I've got a xerox of an article in Armour from 1944/45 that has an account of an M10 taking out a Ferdinand in Italy. Kevin Christensen Lawrence, KS

Another interesting bit of trivia highlighted in When the Odds Were Even. The Vosges Campaign was the first time in history that any army ever forced a winter passage through the Vosges Mountains. So the GIs were not only performing well, but they accomplished something that no army had ever done. The book interesting in that it takes on the general presumption that German WWII Military organization was better, and should be emulated by todays armies. Kevin Christensen Lawrence, KS

Excellent site. One thing that I cannot help but wonder about... the Germans herding pigs to try and get them to run over and explode the daisy-chained anti-tank mines... While this is a horrible spectacle, I have also seen way to many Warner Brothers cartoons. What sort of Regalia would the Nazi Propagandists have created to go with the job. Mine clearing swineherds? Maybe an aristocratic pig with a monicle, a dueling scar, and a peg leg? And what about the allied machine gunners, as they fired away, shouting the cliched epithet, "Take that, Nazi swine!" Kevin Christensen Lawrence, KS

My Dad joined the Army in January of 1941 basically because he was so eligiable for the draft that he couldn't get a job. He trained in a Heavy Weapons Infantry platoon, on water cooled .30 machine gun and 60 mm mortars, but eventually became company clerk because he could type 100 wpm with no mistakes. Since he got all the work done, he read army regulations to fill time, and ended up an OCS candidate. He went through OCS and came out a 2nd Lt. He married his high school sweetheart while on leave, and went off to Memphis, Tennesee to report for duty. He got there a week early, and since there was nothing to do, he reported in, and ended up being picked up by a Tank Destroyer Unit. He'd never heard of the TDs and when he went to a meeting wherein it was explained that the idea was to mount WWI French 75s in the back of half-tracks and drive around behind enemy lines shooting up panzers, he said that the hair rose on the back of his neck. He shipped out with the 813th TD battalion attached to the 34th Infantry division. He spent a lot of time in Tunisia driving half-tracks and jeeps, getting straffed and shelled, watching the ground for bouncing betty mines, and blowing up teller mines with 1/4 pound blocks of TNT. He commented that the closer the battalion got to the front, the more career military in their unit developed interesting ailments that got them shipped home. Most of the half tracks got an extra .50 cal mounted on the back door for AA defense. When I asked how they got these, he said that, "Whenever a jeep hit a mine, it turned out to have had a lot of extra equipment on board." Being the only officer in the battalion not down with the trots, he led the 813th to Hill 609. He said that because the Americans generally did so poorly in North Africa, that after the campaign, all of the U.S. troops had to participate in an exercise in which they had to follow a rolling artillary barrage. What they had to learn was to accept that they had to move among the shorts and accept the causualties from them to get any benefit from the artillary. He said that it was a kind of training that couldn't be done in the US, and caused casualties, but that it saved many lives later. After North Africa, the 813th was outfitted with M10s. Dad was transferred to headquarters company, and was in charge of the payroll. He landed on Utah Beach on D-Day +14, attached to the 79th Infantry division. In the bocage, one of the M10 commanders was blown from the vehicle by a panzerfaust hit. The molten spray of the shaped charge hit the .45 and fused all of it's parts. But the officer survived. (When my Dad read this same story in the book A War to Win, that contains some 813th memoirs he said "Well, now you know it isn't all lies.") While he was never trained in the M10s, he did spend a couple of weeks guarding a cross roads with e platoon, temorarily replacing a causualty until a trained replacement showed up. The 813th was the first armour across the Seine. Later they were transferred from 3rd Army to 7th Army, and went through the Voges campaign and experienced the Nordwind Offensive. At Lunaville, he said that in the early morning, a company of Mk IVs had just moved from their positions while under the cover a morning mist, when all at once the mist lifted. "Our gunners had a field day. They just abandoned their vehicles." He told stories about Tigers and Panthers and King Tigers and Jadgtigers that left us all fascinated by armour, and frustrated that we could find so little in the histories available. After Nordwind an officer asked him to put through a recommendation for the bronze stat, and he replied, "I can't think of anything you've done to deserve it." So he was transferred to recon company for the rest of the war, and drove an M20 armoured car down the autobahn, ending up at Berchtesgarten with the 101st airborn. With two platoons of armoured cars, they negotiated the surrended of a German Corps at the end of the war. Because of all the campaigns he'd been through, he had a lot of points, and was one of the first to get rotated home. For a few years, he used to go deer hunting to unload tension, and sometimes woke in the middle of the night and made candy. Kevin Christensen Lawrence, KS

Thanks for the information about "The Final Crisis"... that looks like a must have. Here's what I know, off the top of my head. At that point in the war, my Dad was a 1st Lt., acting as adjutant in headquarters company in the 813th TD battalion attatched to the 79th Infantry division. He spent Christmas with a French family in Hatten, and was pulled back when the offensive started. He talks about being strafed by rocket-firing Me 262s, watching the P-51 fighter cover run like hell when the jets came by, and coming back down when they were gone. He describes the sound of the big RR gun shells coming down, and taking out huge chunks of the town he was in. In the little villages of Hatten and Rittershoffen, the Germans occupied one side of the street, and the Americans the other for days. In the mornings, Panzers would drive down, shooting up one side, and in the evening, the Shermans would drive down the other. The wounded in the middle of the streets could only be retrived by sending Shermans to drive over them and pull them up through the hatches. Mortar crews were firing almost vertically, trying to shell directly across the street. The 79th Divisional history mentions moments when German and Americans were upstairs and downstairs in the same houses. The book Winter Storm shows before and after pictures of the villages.. and after it's all rubble. The 813th suffered more casualties in those two weeks than during the whole war from Tunisia, and Normandy to Berchtesgarten. They lost 24 our of 36 M10s. For part of the action, the took over some abandoned M18s. I've also seen lately that an 827th crew jumped aboard an abandoned M10, and broke up an attack. My dad said that at one point, surviving M10s and M18s of the 813th and 827th were formed into a quick-reaction force, responding to any German attacks. part of one company of the 813th was cut off, and until Harry Dunigan's little book about some 813th veterans, A War to Win, came out, no one in the battalion had any idea what happened to them. Dunigan talks about being surrounded and having to surrender. After the twelve days, the US forces pulled back under cover of a blizzard. Until Von Luck's Panzer Commander came out, my Dad was under the impression that the Germans had pulled out the same night. Jadgtigers were used during Nordwind. I got a third-hand account from a hobbiest in a San Jose model shop about meeting an old TD vet who showed him a picture of the young TD soldier standing next to a Jadgtiger with a hole in the side, and passing on the comment, "He got my buddy, but I got him." Kevin Christensen Lawrence, KS kskchris@sunflower.com

Does anyone know any good accounts of this battle during the Nordwind Offense in January 1945. Besides the stories I heard from my Dad, and Von Luck's comment from the German side that it was the worst fighting he saw anywhere, I haven't seen much. Nordwind is typically treated as an afterthought to the Bulge, if at all. As I recall, Charles Whiting's book on Nordwind doesn't say anything about the action. A reviewer of that book at Amazon makes this intriguing comment: "Hatten and Rittershoffen was an extremely vicious battle. Reviewer: A reader In the battle of Hatten and Rittershoffen over 5000 German and American soldiers were killed wounded or missing. Over 100 destroyed tanks of both sides littered the battlefield within and surrounding the utterly pulverized villages on the Northern Alsatian Plain along the upper Rhine River during the 12 day tank-infantry battle. This battle between the U.S 14th Armored,79th Infantry and 42nd Infantry Divisions and the German 21st Panzer, 25th Panzer Grenadier, 7th Parachute, and 47th Volks Grenadier Divisions should be the subject of exhaustive research because its received little attention from historians." I've seen a little bit in the 79th Divisional history, and some in a book called Winter Storm : War in Northern Alsace, November 1944 - March 1945 by Lise M. Pommois. Plus, I've seen a little bit about some of the 827th TD actions during the fight. All of this makes me very very curious. Anyone know any good sources or accounts? Kevin Christensen Lawrence, KS

Favorite WWII Tanks: M10 TD M18 TD M36 TD M18/36 Super Hellcat (a prototype) Gotta love the unsung, unheralded, supressed from most histories, doing the David vs Goliath thing, low, well armed, little armour, and fast, and posessing the coolest patch ever produced, and earning a comment in H. M. Coles history of the Battle of the Bulge that the AARs for the skirmishes in the conflict over and over show TDs showing up and changing the course of battle. Kevin Christensen Lawrence, KS

I followed the link to the Haunted tank, and loved the caption: "Memories of the Haunted Tank! (DC's most realistic war stories!, by Stephen Gentner)" Yep... an M3 Stewart blasting three or four Tigers 1s per issue, using "hypervelocity" ammo for its deadly 37mm. While the comic did have great drawings of the Stuart and the Tigers, and once, I recall seeing the Stuart blasting a Sturmtiger (it missed by a few meters, and so the 380 mm shell caused no damage to the Stuart, the the 37 mm of the Stuart cut right through the front armour of the Sturmtiger), and another time, driving between two tigers and causing them to blast one another... As hungry ss I was for WWII tank stuff, I preferred Sgt. Fury back then. The last "Haunted Tank" story I picked up had the intrepid Sgt. having to go to a Tank Scrapheap (really...heaped in piles... acres of them), which seemed to contain no authentic WWII vehicles, and using a convenient crane to assemble something that looked vagely like an M47, which he estatically deemed "a fighting tank!." At last... after tanking out more Tigers than were built with an M3? Sheesh... The one redeeming feature of the Haunted Tank stories were the authntic vehicle drawings, and after they dumped the Stuart, it had nothing. But actually, there is one potential battlefield conversion that could have worked really well. In 1945, someone at Aberdeen figured out that if you raised an M36 TD turret basket 4 inches, you could drop it into an M18 Hellcat chassis. Without a muzzle break, the 90mm gun firing would knock the Super Hellcat back two feet, but it was fine with a muzzle break, and actually got better gas milage. Now, that would be cool... a 90mm TD that scoots at 50 mph. Just the ticket for Tiger Hunting. Kevin Christensen Lawrence, KS

Panzer Elite is a deep, detailed, immersive, first person armour simulation. It stands out for the extraordinary terrain, challenging AI, fanatically detailed armour modeling, including authentic interiors and gunnery. It is the first WWII armour simulation that demands that you learn and apply authentic WWII armour tactics in order to survive. The strengths and weaknesses of US and German units are modeled carefully, including the Zeiss optics. Consequentally, playing different sides presents very different tactical challenges. Besides the 3 instant action scenerios, there are 40+ single scenerios that you can play as the US or Germans, as well as short campaigns, or a long campaign including Tunisia, Italy, and Normandy. Up to now, I've mostly played the instant action, finally beating the very-tough "defend the church" scenerio. My brother has been working through the Tunisia campaign. You can start playing by learning a few keyboard commands and mouse clicks, but it has a multitude of commands and difficulty options. It's easy to start to play, but has a steep learning curve to master. You can play strictly from the turret, designating targets, moving the vehicle, issuing commands to wingmen, and watching the explosions when you kill or are killed. You can also move to any crew position. On-line support from Wings Simulations is excellent. One offical patch is out, and another expected in a few weeks. Player groups are forming for head-to-head play at the Kali server. Panzer Elite add-ons are forthcoming, with Wings committed to providing a mission disk covering the rest of the War, and a fan group planning to build models of British and Russian tanks. Compared to Combat Mission, you have less precise control over units on your side, but it is equally involving and more immersive, due to the first person, real time play. Both games are astonishing achievements, and I'm enjoying them both. Kevin Christensen Lawrence, KS