80 pages

A good and interesting book with some conflicting information, mostly on PzKpfw 38(t). The PzKpfw 38(t) was originally a Czech light tank that continued to be produced for the Germans after the occupation of Czechoslovakia and formed a significant part of the German tank fleet from 1939 to 1942. It was used by several panzer divisions as their MBT during this period in lieu of the PzKpfw IIIs that German industry was unable to produce enough. The Czech origin is revealed by the (t) in the type designation, t = Tschechoslowakisch. The tanks of the BT series were Soviet fast/cavalry tanks quite a lot like British cruiser tanks. 

To me the best part was the rather meagre information on the Soviet actions. The subject is well chosen because PzKpfw 38(t) and BT tanks are probably fairly unknown AFVs in the English-speaking world and also the attack of Panzergruppe 3 along Vilnius – Minsk axis might well be the least known of the four German main attack axes at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa. There are very few first-hand accounts of the battles, but the reader can get a pretty clear picture of the course of the battles. The description is well interwoven, and the flow is good. The author himself gives conflicting opinions how well the subject battles are documented from the German side, at first, he notes that there is enough documentation to provide a detailed description of the battles. From German side there is the war diary of the 7. Panzer Division and records of higher corps and army commands but in the last chapter, Further Reading, he notes, from the German perspective, the war diary of the 7. Panzer Division provided an essential skeletal framework of the actions but offers very little detail about the tank battles. Much of the records of XXXIX. Armeekorps (mot.), the Corps 7. Panzer Division was attached to, were lost and surviving bits offer little coverage of these battles. Also, Manteuffel’s divisional history for this period is heavily based on the war diary and there are not much in memoirs. The only exception is the account of Horst Ohrloff’s, a Panzer 38(t) company commander in Panzer Regiment 25 at the time. Additionally, according to Zaloga Hermann Hoth’s book provides a good assessment of the campaign from a command level perspective. 

On the other hand, on the source material of the Soviet side, he is consistent. Even if the headquarters of the 5th Tank Division was destroyed during the battle as was most of the division, in recent years Russian researchers have uncovered extensive pre-war records of the Soviet 5th Tank Division that help provide a detailed picture of its formation and training. In addition, new Russian books provide good deal of new information and there are published several reminiscences of the surviving personal in some articles.

The Introduction is good. The enormity of the tank battles in the western border regions of the Soviet Union during June – August 1941 is not so widely known.

Kliment's and Doyle's book gives for Panzer 38(t) the same specifications as Zaloga in the specifications table for Panzer 38(t) Ausf. D on page 13. On the other hand, according to Chamberlain’s and Doyle’s Encyclopedia of German Tanks of World War Two Panzer 38(t) Ausf. D weighs only 9.5 tons, not 9.8. Only the up-armoured models from Ausf. E onwards weighted 9.85 tons.

The Soviet Army ordered BT-7 in the year 1934 that was four years earlier than the Czechoslovakian Army ordered LT vz. 38 tank, which was known as PzKpfw 38(t) in German service. Before January 1940 the designation of PzKpfw 38(t) in German service had been PzKpfw III(t) showing its use as the main gun tank in some German tank formations in lieu of PzKpfw III, which were short in supply in 1939 – 1942.

While Zaloga mentions that the original TNHP prototype was sent to Britain for trials he does not mention British results which were not overly positive according Forty who uses one page’s worth of text to quotes from the British report on the trial. 

The specifications for the BT-7 Model 37 given in this book are identical to those given in Kolomiyets’ book with exception of the amount of machine gun ammunition. Zaloga gives two figures, for a tank without and with a radio transceiver, but Kolomiyets gives only one, very probably that for a tank without a transceiver. Zaloga’s figure for the BT-7 Model 37 with a radio transceiver is the same to that Kolomiyets gives for Model 35 with a transceiver.

There are some differences between Zaloga’s and Kolomiyets’ specifications of the BT-7 and those in Valera Potapov’s good The Russian Military Zone site. E.g. the former give for BT-7 Model 37 the main armament ammunition load as 188/146 (without radio transceiver/with transceiver) while Potapov, without identifying the Model, as 172/132 but for BT-7M as 188. BT-7M was a BT-7 powered by the 500 hp V-2 diesel engine and not surprisingly Kolomiyets gives for it the same ammunition load as for BT-7 Model 37. As the range (cross-country and on road track/wheel) Zaloga gives as 160 km and 375/500 km, Kolomiyets (track/wheel) the same and Potapov (track/wheel) as 230km/500 km etc. Based on Kolomiyets’ book it seems that Potapov gives the information on BT-7 Model 35 and Zaloga BT-7 Model 37. Both models had 400 hp M-17T engine. Kolomiyets gives the range as 220 km (on tracks)/450 km (on wheels) for Model 35 and 375 / 500 km for Model 37. 

According to Zaloga significant advantage for the 38(t) in combat against the BT-7 was that it had a cupola for the commander with four episcopes, although the British trial report on their tests on one mild steel prototype in March 1939 mentions “the episcope and three periscopes” for the commander. Judging from photographs the commander’s cupola of the prototype seems identical to the production LT Vz 38 aka Pz Kpfw 38(t) Ausf. A but the head of the commander’s periscopic sight is different, perhaps only lacking the armoured cylinder protecting the periscope head on the production vehicles. The commander/gunner could use also his periscopic sight for surveillance because it was not mechanically linked to the gun. The German doctrine preferred commander to operate with his head outside the tank whenever possible for better situational awareness despite risks involved. Whereas Soviet tank tactics preferred the commander to remain under armour even if the commander of a BT-7 had only a periscopic sight with a half circle traverse and a vision port at the side of the turret for external vision.

Zaloga tells the tank radio distribution was not as black and white as often thought when talking on German and Soviet tanks in 1941. Both tanks had intercoms and in 38(t) units tanks only down to platoon commanders’ tanks had radio transceivers (transmitter/receivers) at this time. The rest of platoon tanks had only receiver. According to him 44 per cent of BT-7 tanks were fitted with radio transceivers. While on paper Soviet radios had much better range, they were more fragile.

A new information to me was that some later-production BT-7s had the stabilized TOS gunsight, which was gyro-stabilized in the vertical axis. Wiki says “The gun was later improved into the 45 mm tank gun model 1938, which had an electric firing system and a TOS stabilized (in vertical plane only) gun sight, allowing for accurate fire while the tank was in motion. The gyro stabilizer was removed from the design in 1941 due to inexperienced tank crews not activating the stabilizer." I read John Milsom’s Russian Tanks 1900-1970 in 70s but I had completely forgotten the use of the TOS sight in Soviet tanks before the Great Patriotic War.

Strangely, while Zaloga gives in the specifications the same speed for the PzKpfw 38(t) Ausf. D as my other sources, namely 42 km/h, on the page 32 in the Mobility section he writes that ”both tanks had similar tracked road speed about 55km/h…” and while in specifications he gives the cross-country speeds as 15 km/h for PzKpfw 38(t) Ausf. D and 32 km/h for BT-7 Model 1937 but again in the Mobility section he writes that “…similar cross-country speeds of about 30km/h…” The figures given in the technical data are probably the correct ones so IMHO Zaloga gives too good impression of the mobility of the PzKpfw 38(t) but I can trust Zaloga’s claim that PzKpfw 38(t) was more reliable and easier to drive than BT-7. The Finnish opinion on BT-7 was rather negative and they made a very limited use of those captured in stark contrast to the captured T-26s, which became the most common tank in the Finnish Army during the Continuation War. Although the new tracks of BT-7 were better than those of BT-5 also BT-7 had tendency of often shed off its track during tight turn in high speed or in difficult terrain. In Finland and also in the Eastern/Soviet Karelia there are lot of poor tank country. Early in the Continuation War the advancing Finnish Army was able to capture number of BT-5 and BT-7 tanks either undamaged or with such minor damage that they could be swiftly repaired and pressed into own use. However, their career with the Finnish Army was very short. Technical reliability proved poor, fuel consumption of M-17T gasoline engine excessive and the engine needed extensive overhaul after every 200 hours of use. At that time the most common tank in Finnish use was captured T-26s, which had GAZ T-26 engine that also required extensive overhaul after only every 250 hours of use - but still better than mere 200 hours of use for the M-17T. Hence Finnish Army decided not to repair BT-7 tanks for its use. However, later Finns modified 18 of their war-booty BT-7s into the ill-fated BT-42 "assault guns" by constructing a new turret large enough to house a 114 H/18 howitzer (British Q.F. 4.5-inch Howitzer Mk 2) and two crew members.

Kliment and Doyle and few other sources note there were only two hatches for four men in the PzKpfw 38(t), Zaloga does not mention that. IMHO the loader and the driver were not happy when in the case of an emergency they had to wait in the cramped space that the commander or radio operator/hull gunner got out first. In a BT-7 there were three hatches for its three men crew, so at least its crew could bail out fast. And on which side the driver sat in the PzKpfw 38(t)? According to Zaloga both the radio operator and the driver sat on the left side of the hull front. In fact, the driver sat on the right-hand side.

On the page 36 the table of organization and the number of tanks per type in the 7. Panzer Division is given, but only those with its Panzer Regiment are included. According to my other sources the Panzer-Pionier-Battalion of the division had two Panzer IIs and 10 Pz.Kpfw.I (M.G.) (Sd.Kfz.101) mit Abwurfvorrichtung, or maybe a few of those 10 were Ladungsleger II, based on PzKw II.  Those were normal tanks with a devise for the laying of explosive charges of 50 to 75 kg at a target. They were not intended to participate tank battles but were tanks anyway and the few Pz.Kpfw.IIs with their 20 mm cannon could be dangerous to the weakly armoured BT-tanks. There were also three command tanks with Nachrichten-Abteilung/Signal battalion but at that stage those were armed only with one machine gun. The number of Panhard 178 armoured cars serving with the Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 37 of the 7. Panzer Division is not given in this The Combatants chapter. They were armed with a 25 mm cannon which was effective against BTs and T-26s and even those T-28 medium tanks which were not up-armoured and at least most if not all of the 24 T-28s of the 5th Tank Division participating the combat at Alytus seem to have belonged to this category. On the other hand the number of BA-10 armoured cars, armed with a 45 mm gun and 2 × 7.62 mm machine guns and even that of BA-20 armoured cars, armed only with a 7.62 mm machine gun, serving with the 5th Tank Division and with its mother formation 3rd Mechanized Corps are given on pages 43 - 44. The number of Panhard 178s, 64, with the 7. Panzer Division is however given in the table 7. Panzer Division tank strength, 24 July 1941 on the page 74, which gives also the strength on 22 June as the baseline. 

The biographies are of Karl Rothenburg, the commander of the Panzer-Regiment 25 of 7. Panzer-Division and Fëdor F. Fëdorov, the commander of the 5th Tank Division.

Zaloga begins the description of the 5th Tank Division with a short general account of the turbulent development of the Soviet armoured forces in 1930s with Stalin purges which hit especially hard to mechanized formations and four radical reorganizations, the last of which began in June 1940.
 
Zaloga says that Pavel Rotmistrov, later the famous general officer commanding the 5th Guards Tank Army at Kursk in 1943 and who was the assistant commander of the 5th Tank Division in June 1941, had commanded a tank brigade during the Winter War against Finland but this seems to be an error; according to de.wikipedia.org at that time he had commanded a tank battalion within the 35th Light Tank Brigade. Also, according to Kolomyjec’s Tanks in the Winter War 1939 – 1940 the commander of the brigade during the Winter War was Colonel Kosjuba and none of the tank brigades participating the Winter War was commanded by Rotmistrov.

According to Zaloga most of the officers with the 5th Tank Division were very inexperienced and one or two ranks below the usual standard for the positions they held. E.g., only one of the eight tank battalions was commanded by a major and four were commanded by senior lieutenants.

On the training. According to Irincheev at the beginning of the Winter War, 30 November 1939, many of the participating Soviet Tank Battalions were well trained with highly motivated crews, the same was not true to most of the infantry units. But the massive expansion of Soviet tank forces from the later part of 1940 onward might well have diluted the quality of the manpower of the force. 

The 7. Panzer-Division and 5th Tank Division had almost the same number of tanks but 5th had over 2½ times more medium tanks but while its T-34s were new ones many of its older T-28 mediums were in poor repairs. The two photos of T-28 medium tank in the book, both of the same knocked out T-28, show a T-28 armed with the original 76-mm KT-28 (L/16.5) tank gun not with more powerful 76-mm L-10 (L/26) tank gun. Both T-28s captured by Finns during the Winter War (30 Nov. 1939 – 13 March 1940) were armed with the L-10 tank gun. All 18 T-28s shown in war-time photos in Kolomyjec’ Tanks in the Winter War 1939 – 1940 which show the main gun have the L-10 gun as had all T-28s participating the October Revolution Day Parade on 7 November 1940 on Red Square, Moscow in the photos in Baryatinsky’s and Kinnear’s Steel Fortress The Russian T-28 Medium Tank book. There are in Baryatinsky’s and Kinnear’s book also photos of three T-28s which according to authors were knocked out during the fighting in Alytus area in June 1941, one of them the same shown in the Zaloga’s book. Two of the three were armed with the 76-mm KT-28 and one was a T-28E i.e., up-armoured. However according to Kolomiets and ru.wiki, the latter photo is from August 1941 and not from Alytus area.  And one of the other T-28s is according to Kolomiets one of 3rd Tank Division/1st Mechanized Corps T-28s, which belonged to the Leningrad Military District and was based around Dno, 530 km NE from Alytus. According to ru.wiki all 40 T-28s in the Baltic Special Military District were armed with KT-28 guns, 27 of these belonged to the 5th Tank Division. 

In Kolomyjec’ / Коломиец Т-28 book there are three photos of T-28s of the 5th Tank Division knocked out in the Alytus area from which one can clearly see the main gun, all of these have the older KT-28.  
Kolomyjec agrees with Zaloga that during the battle on the eastern bank of the Neman River, the 9th Tank Regiment lost 16 out of its 24 (28 in the Zaloga’s book) T-28s on the battlefield, the rest were out of order and were blown up by crews (Most of the T-28 tanks that survived the afternoon battle were abandoned late in the day due to mechanical problems.) 24 vs. 28 probably a typo in either book, it appears from the photos that at least some of the T-28s was simply abandoned, e.g. none of the five T-28s of the 5th Tank Division left on the battlefield in the Alytus region shown in photos in Kolomyjec’ / Коломиец Т-28 book was blown up.

On pages 48-49 Zaloga lists the preparations made by the Soviet Union on Lithuanian territory in the event of a possible German invasion from 14 June 1941 onwards. At the attack sector of the 7. Panzer Division the Soviet first line defences were unusually weak because the Soviet infantry division in the area was only partially deployed because it got its movement order too late. Also, the order that authorized the laying of anti-tank minefields in this sector was given too late to have any real effect.

Tables of PzKpfw 38(t) deployed for Operation Barbarossa, 22 June 1941 by formation and of BT tank deployment in Soviet mechanized corps on 22 June 1941 by model and formation showed that there were over 6 times more BTs in the Western Military Districts than PzKpfw 38(t)s deployed for Operation Barbarossa, 4,113 vs. 660 at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa. In addition, there were 229 BT-tanks in the Moscow Military District and almost all of the rest in the Transbaikal Military District or the Far Eastern Front. Altogether there were 6,094 BT-tanks in the 26 mechanized corps of the Red Army.

While generally giving a good description on the situation in the Soviet Union during the last months before the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, Zaloga’s claim that the Red Air Force did nothing to stop German aircraft overflowing its borders is not a completely accurate description, the VVS KA [the Soviet Army Air Force] even lost two MiG-3s when trying to catch a high flying Junkers Ju 86 P. The MiGs stalled when trying to catch the German plane. In Timin’s book there is a long list of German intrusions into the Soviet Baltic airspace, most were shallow ones, and several were interrupted by intercepting Soviet fighters, in one case on 5 April, a ‘He 111’ at 4,000 m was intercepted and Soviet fighters fired 20 warning burst of machinegun-fire while the German plane flew out to sea. The maximum number of fighters sent to intercept an intruder was on 9 April 1941 when 17 fighters were sent to intercept a Dornier Do 17 flying at 4,000 m. When encountering Soviet fighters, the Dornier flew out to sea. Further south, the Luftwaffe lost a Junkers Ju 86 P operating from Krakow. On 15 April 1941, it suffered engine trouble during a photo reconnaissance sortie to the Kiev-Zhitomir area and lost altitude. It was detected and intercepted by a Soviet pilot from 46 IAP in an I-16. The Soviet pilot forced the German crew to make a forced landing about 10 kilometres south of Rivne/Równe/Rovno. He either fired a short burst into the left, working engine of the Junkers or simply signalled to the German crew that they should land. Sources differ. 

Zaloga does not mention that the Panzer Divisions equipped with PzKpfw 38(t)s as their main tank had more PzKpfw IVs and 5 cm PaKs (anti-tank guns) than the Panzer Divisions which had PzKpfw IIIs as their main tanks to compensate their weaker main tank. Kampfgruppe thinking allowed for Germans to form very flexibly suitable groupings, using field artillery pieces and 8.8 cm AA guns for extra anti-tank support against heavy Soviet tanks. XXXIX. Armee Korps (mot), under which the 7. Panzer Division fought during Operation Barbarossa, had under it a company (1./Panzerjägerabtailung 8) of six 8.8cm Flak 18(Sfl) auf Zugkraftwagen 12t Sd.Kfz. 8) self-powered anti-tank vehicles.

All my other sources (Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg Bd. 4, Niehorster, Stoves, Ohrloff etc.) tell that also the 20. Infanterie-Division (mot.) was under XXXIX. Armee Korps (mot) control on 22 June 1941 as were the 7. and 20. Panzer Divisions and the 14. Infanterie-Division (mot.) mentioned by Zaloga.
As Zaloga, also von Manteuffel says that at the border area defence was relatively weak and enemy artillery in any noteworthy strength appeared nowhere but on the eastern bank of the Neman River the panzer spearhead suffered significant losses due to anti-tank and tank fire. Heavy enemy counterattacks by tanks, including heavy ones with artillery and strong infantry support were repelled with the help of attached I./Panzer-Artillerie-Regiment 78. I wonder where the Corps utilised its unique heavy mobile anti-tank asset, 1./Pz.Jg.Abt. 8 with its six heavy armoured half-tracks armed with 88 mm cannon. The 7. Panzer-Division was the point formation of the XXXIX. Corps so in a way a natural place for the unit, especially after Germans met T-34s, which seemed impervious to German tank guns. But none of my sources mentions the unit being at Alytus during the battle but none is very specific on the battle. And when Zaloga lists the tank kill claims made by different German units during the battle, he makes no mention of 1./Pz.Jg.Abt. 8.

The formations of the XXXIX. Corps (mot.) seem to have advanced in line along the main road up to Alytus. The 7. Panzer Division used its own infantry to secure the breakthrough, perhaps the Germans feared that their main advance road would become congested, and the formations would have become entangled if the troops of an infantry division (mot.) had attacked first across the border and then the 7. Panzer Division would have advanced through them. After infantry of the division had opened the way the reconnaissance units the division and the Panzer Regiment 25 began the dash towards Alytus and its bridges over the Neman River.

Zaloga gives some information on the Soviet actions which were new to me. Some BA-10 armoured cars from of the 5th Tank Division skirmished with German troops west of Alytus. 

Zaloga writes that a few 37 mm anti-aircraft guns of the 5th Air Defence Battalion were in Alytus when Germans arrived there, and they had been ordered to prepare to deal with ground targets. Maybe it should have been noted that the Soviet 37 mm AA gun was effective against PzKpfw 38(t)s up to and including the Ausf. D up to 1,000 m. A Motorized Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion of a Tank Division usually had twelve 37mm AA guns as had a Separate battalion of automatic AA guns. Zaloga mentions that the Soviet AA gun crews claimed to have knocked out 14 German tanks and the 76 mm regimental guns a further 16 German tanks but continues that German accounts suggest that there was very limited fighting before the bridges were captured, so these claims were a gross exaggeration. But anyway, in the thread https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=181387 there are some photos showing, if their captions are correct, that at least two PzKpfw 38(t)s were destroyed inside Alytus.

On the Soviet 76 mm regimental gun M1927, because the Finns captured some Soviet BR-350A armour piercing ammunition for the gun it seems that the ammunition type was available at least in late 1941 if not earlier. On the other hand, T-28s armed with KT-28 gun seems to have carried only high-explosive fragmentation and shrapnel shells. The KT-28 was a tank gun variant of the 76 mm regiment gun model 1927.The penetration power of its armour-piercing shell due to the low muzzle velocity was very low. With the BR-350A AP ammunition M1927 would have been marginally effective against PzKpfw 38(t)s up to Ausf. D, hull front armour and turret front 25 mm, at shorter ranges. Its HE ammunition, shells weighted little over 6 kg with explosive content of 710 – 815 g, depending on the HE shell type, might well have been more effective against hard but brittle Czech armour. British tests in 1944 showed than even the Grenade, Hand, Anti-Tank, No. 75, also known as the "Hawkins grenade" weighting about 1.02 kilograms (2.2 lb) and contained approximately 450 grams (0.99 lb) of explosive, usually either ammonal or TNT could pierce the 17 mm thick roof armour of Panther tank which the British saw being more brittle than comparable British armour. Because HE shells depended on chemical not kinetic energy in their effectiveness against armoured targets, so contrary to what Zaloga writes IMHO the distance, as long as it was not too long for hitting moving targets, was irrelevant.

During the Alytus battle the tank quantities of the participating divisions were quite close to each other until Panzer-Regiment 21 of 20. Panzer Division began to arrive little after 5 P.M. The Panzer Regiment of 7. Panzer Division had 53 PzKpfw IIs, 167 PzKpfw 38(t)s, 7 PzBefWg 38(t)s, 30 PzKpfw IVs and 8 PzBefWg IIIs and 5th Tank Division had 170 BT-7s, 18 T-26s, 30 T-28s and 50 T-34s of which 30 were Model 1940 and 20 Model 1941. At least some of the T-34s utilized beforehand dug firing positions as one can see in the thread https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=181387 .

According to Zaloga Soviet 5th Tank Division lost most of its cohesion already on 22 June 1941 during the battle for the dominance of the east bank of the Neman River. After four days of fighting, it was almost wiped out. Also, the 7th Panzer Division suffered high tank losses and after a week of intense fighting it had only about half of its PzKpfw 38(t)s still operational, much of the tank losses on both sides were because of mechanical problems. As usual in tank warfare, the control of battlefield was crucial, the side controlling it could recover its damaged and broken down AFVs.

The double page showing gun sights is again interesting. It is interesting even if not very surprising to note that the Czech sight was somewhat like French and British ones, and the Soviet one fairly similar to German gun sights. Not so surprising because of the Czech and French military co-operation between the world wars and German and Soviet secret close military co-operations, especially with tank and aircraft matters, up to early 1930s.

The table 7. Panzer Division tank strength, 24 July 1941 shows very high losses of Panhard armoured cars with the 7. Panzer Division. This is in line with my other sources (e.g. Merriam, Hahn and Chamberlain & Doyle), according to them 107 Panhards were lost in 1941 out of 190 which participated in Operation Barbarossa. The armoured recce battalions of the Panzer divisions (7. and 20.) which were equipped with them had almost twice as many armoured cars than the other Panzer Divisions whose armoured recce battalions were equipped with German armoured cars. Also, the losses of the German-built armoured cars had been high, 426 vehicles. Panhard was a very good armoured car for its time.

On 24 July 1941 only 40 % of the PzKpfw 38(t)s with which the 7. Panzer Division had begun Operation Barbarossa were operational, only slightly less than PzKpfw IVs (43 %) but clearly less than PzKpfw IIs (56 %), but not so surprising because PzKpfw 38(t)s were the main battle tank of the division. Fairly similar was the situation with the 4. Panzer Division totally equipped with German tanks. On 23 July 1941 45 % of its original PzKpfw IIs were operational as were 30 % of its PzKpfw IIIs and 30 % of its PzKpfw IVs, the rest were being in repair or in maintenance or were total losses. The numbers of the operational were 20 PzKpfw IIs, 31 PzKpfw IIIs and six PzKpfw IVs. On 21 July 1941 the number of total tank losses of its panzer regiment was 42. With the Panzer Regiment 25 of the 7. Panzer Division the number was 49 on 24 July 1941. The Panzer Regiment of 4. Panzer Division had begun Operation Barbarossa with 177 tanks and the Panzer Regiment of 7. Panzer Division with 265 tanks.

While according to the Durability and losses of German tank types, August – September 1941 table in the book the proportions of those destroyed for PzKpfw III, IV and 38(t) were almost identical at the turn of August and September, there were clearly more PzKpfw IIIs in repairs than the other two types. According to Zaloga one reason for that was that PzKpfw III still suffered from transmission problems.

The losses because of mines for PzKpfw 38(t)s were high. It was clearly smaller than PzKpfw III and IV and weighed less than half of what the other two types. Also, its bottom armour was only half of that of PzKpfw IIIs, 8 mm vs 16 mm. And if it was hard but brittle as were the other armour plates in PzKpfw 38(t), it might have been even more dangerous to the crew in case of mine explosion. But anyway, the bottom plate of PzKpfw 38(t) was thicker, 8 mm vs 5 mm, than that of the German light tank PzKpfw II, even if their weights were about same, namely about 9.5 tons.

Drawings
Colour 3-views of both tank types, PzKpfw 38(t) Ausf. D, 7. Panzer-Division and BT-7 Model 1937, 5th Tank
   Division with specifications.
Crew layouts of both
Turret interiors of both showing ammunition racks inside the turrets. There are also drawings of the gun
    ammunition types, for both an armour-piercing-tracer and an HE.
A double page drawing of a tank battle, IMHO rather unnecessary.
The views through the gun sights

Tables
Comparative tank gun performance
Orders of Battle of 7. Panzer and 5th Tank Divisions
3rd Mechanized Corps armoured vehicles, 22 June 1941 by type and formation
5th Tank Division armoured vehicles, 22 June 1941 by type and unit
PzKpfw 38(t) deployed for Operation Barbarossa, 22 June 1941 by formation
BT tank deployment in Soviet mechanized corps on 22 June 1941 by type and formation
7. Panzer Division tank strength, 24 July 1941
PzKpfw 38(t) Eastern Front statistics 1941
Soviet tank losses in 1941 by campaign
Durability and losses of German tank types, August – September 1941 

Maps
Soviet fortifications in the attack sector of the 7. Panzer-Division between the border and Kalvarija.
Operation Barbarossa in Lithuania, 22 June 1941
The combat route of the 7. Panzer Division 22 – 25 June 1941 i.e., from the border to Vilnius
The battle for the Alytus bridges, 22 June 1941. On this map, it is confusing that the city blocks and the
surrounding forests are both marked with khaki. The marking is even more confusing because there are plenty of straight forest tracks / fires brakes in the forests. Fortunately, the area has not changed that much since the war, so a glance at Google Maps solved the problem.

There are some interesting photos. One of them being a photo of a PzBefWg 38(t) (Panzerbefehlswagen/command tank) from the front taken in France during the Battle of France. It belonged to 2./Nachrichten-Abtailung 83, the signal battalion of 7. Panzer Division. Its only armament seems to have been a 37 mm cannon, of course it can also be a very good dummy. The Table of organization and equipment of the Armoured Radio Company of the signal battalion of a Panzer Division on 10 May 1940 included seven PzBefWg, four with No. 1 Platoon and three with No. 3 Platoon but none with No. 2 according to Niehorster. No. 2 Platoon had six Sd.Kfz. 263 8-wheel drive Panzerfunkwagen, also armed with one machine gun like PzBefWg. Now the 1940 Kriegsgliederung of 7. Panzer Division shows only six machine guns with the Armoured Radio Company of its signal battalion so it might have lacked the PzBefWg but it definitely had at least some Sd.Kfz. 263s, there are photos showing the then division commander Erwin Rommel in a Sd.Kfz. 263 during the Battle of France. In addition, based on the picture in Zaloga's book, No. 2 Platoon also seems to have had at least one PzBefWg 38(t). During that time the Panzer Regiment of the division had had only eight PzBefWgn all PzBefWg 38(t)s.

So, a good introduction in PzKpfw 38(t), the tanks of the BT-series and the border battles of the Vilnius axis, which became a crucial part of the northern pincer of the Minsk pocket.

Sources
D.T.D. Experimental Report A.T. No. 232. Part III REPORT OF BALLISTIC TRIALS against Pz.Kw. V Model G (D.T.D. No. 3040) held at Shoeburyness Range on October 24th-26th, 1944

Baryatinsky, Mikhail and Kinnear, Jim, Steel Fortress The Russian T-28 Medium Tank (Tiptree: Barbarossa
      Books, 2000).
Bergström, Christer. Barbarossa - The Air Battle: July–December 1941 (London: Chevron/Ian Allan, 2007).
Boog, Horst et al., Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, Band 4, Der Angriff auf die Sowjetunion
     (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt DVA; 3rd edition, 1983).
Chamberlain, Peter and Hilary L. Doyle, Encyclopedia of German Tanks of World War Two: A complete
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Forty, George, German Tanks of World War Two ‘In Action’ (London: Blandford, 1987).
Glantz, David M Colonel, Soviet Military Operational Art: In Pursuit of Deep Battle (Abingdon, Oxon: Frank
       Cass, 1991).
Glantz, David M., ”Introduction: Prelude to Barbarossa”, The Initial Period of War on the Eastern Front 22
     June – August 1941. Proceedings of the Fourth Art of War Symposium, Garmisch, FRG, October 1987
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Glantz, David M., “The Border Battles on the Siauliai Axis 22 - 26 June 1941. Overview” in David M.
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Glantz, David M., “The Border Battles on the Vilnius Axis 22 - 26 June 1941. Overview” in David M. Glantz
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     Sonderfahrzeuge, "Wunderwaffen", Verbrauch und Verluste (Koblenz: Bernard & Graefe Verlag, 1987).
Hooton, E.R., War over the Steppes: The air campaigns on the Eastern Front 1941–45 (Oxford: Osprey, 2016).
Hovilainen, Pentti, Tankkirykmentistä Panssaripataljoonaan 1919 – 1949 (Parola: Panssaripataljoonan
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Jentz, Thomas L., Panzertruppen, The Complete Guide of the Creation & Combat Employment of Germany’s
    Tank Force • 1933-1942 (Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 1996).
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Khazanov, Dmitriy and Medved, Aleksander, MiG-3 Aces of World War 2 (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2012).
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     1940 (Москва: Стратегия КМ, 2001) (Stockholm: Leandoer & Ekholm förlag, 2008).
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Коломиец, Максим, Ϲредний танк Т-28 Трехглавый Монстр Сталина (Москва: “Яуэа”, “Стратегия
         КМ”, “Зксмо”, 2007).
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     Waffen-SS Formations (22nd June 1941) (Hannover: Dr. Leo W. G. Niehorster, 1992).
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http://www.history.enjoy.ru/bt2.html. Retrieved on 1 March 2000. Seems to be dead now.
http://www.history.enjoy.ru/bt5.html. Retrieved on 1 March 2000. Seems to be dead now.
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http://armchairgeneral.com/rkkaww2/formation/mechcorps/3mk.htm  Retrieved on 17 March 2021.
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40 numbered A4 size pages of high quality gloss paper but in fact 43 pages because the inner side of the front cover and the both sides of the back cover are fully utilized with drawings, text and photos. By using a small font much information and many photos is succeeded to be crammed on those 43 pages.
30 colour profiles
one 5-view colour drawing  
1:72 scale 5-view line drawing of standard production model, two profile line drawings (Long Range Development Unit version and standard plane with extended cockpit canopy) and a scrap profile of the Bristol Hercules HE 18 powered prototype.

I bought a second-hand copy of this publication. It was fairly cheap and I have been interested in Wellesley since I saw the box art of the Matchbox plastic model of it as a teenager. The main reasons to buy the copy were the geodetic construction of Wellesley (Vickers Wellington has always been one of my many favourite planes) which is well illustrated and explained in the booklet and the very reasonable price of it. And I wasn’t disappointed, the publication is very good in explaining the geodetic construction of Wellesley and the use of the plane by the RAF. The main operational area for Wellesley during the Second World War was the Horn of Africa during the East Africa Campaign 10 June 1940 – 27 November 1941.

There is not much to complain, some small details, e.g. the fact that all escorts of the convoy BN 3 are given as HMS Xxxx, in other words as Royal Navy ships when in fact the light cruiser HMS Leander had been HMNZS Leander since 1933 and there was no HMS Parramatta but HMAS Parramatta.

On the pages 32 – 33 the story on the occasion on 21 October 1940 when according to White a Wellesley crew got eight light bomb hits on an Italian destroyer putting it out of commission for a while somewhere near the Straits of Mandeb. The place is given as off Haleah Island, probably same as Halib Island. I cannot find any confirmation to this from any of the sources I have in my possession. But on the same day according to the British Official History, Playfair et al page 248, the Italian destroyer Francesco Nullo was driven ashore near Massawa by the Royal Navy and was subsequently bombed and destroyed by three Bristol Blenheims of No. 45 Squadron. Rohwer’s & Hummelchen’s Chronology of the War at Sea, 1939–1945 on page 39 gives essentially the same info and confirming that the three Blenheims destroyed the ship on 21 October 1940. Wiki and wrecksite.eu confirmed the story and give the exact place, on Harmi Island. It, also known as Harmil Island, lays NE of Massawa while Halib Island is SE of Assab, so a considerable distance to SSE. The Italian destroyers in Red Sea area usually operated from Massawa and nothing I have seen on the operational history of the seven Italian Red Sea destroyers implicates that any other of them but Francesco Nullo would have been damaged on 21 October 1940. But the damage to that unidentified destroyer might have been so light that it is not mentioned in any of my source. Or the ship was not a destroyer but a smaller ship. It is certainly not unheard that aircrews claimed hitting a much larger vessel than their real target was whether they hit it or not. Even the fate of Francesco Nullo is not entirely clear. While Langtree in his The Kelly’s on page 109 claims that Francesco Nullo was sunk by a torpedo from HMS Kimberley off Harmil Island after the latter had disabled it with gunfire. This is agreed by Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships 1922-1946 but according to Whitley while agreeing that HMS Kimberley forced Francesco Nullo ashore he agrees with the Playfair et.al. and several other sources that after that the Italian ship was bombed and destroyed by the RAF. Strangely neither Shores in his Dust Clouds in the Middle East nor Warner in his The Bristol Blenheim mention this action even if this would have been a significant success to the RAF and particularly to the Blenheim unit if the ultimate destruction of a 1058 tons destroyer was their achievement.

On November 16, 1940 according to Shores and the FlyPast Special one Wellesley (L2695) failed to return from a bombing sortie against Massawa. White only mentions that three Wellesleys were sent to bomb Gura, circa 75 km SSE Massawa and did that without a loss. The anti-aircraft defences of Massawa claimed one Aden-based bomber shot down during a raid. The Wellesley was a part of the small on Prim Island based detachment of No. 223 Squadron. Perim Island situates circa 170 km West of Aden.

On 3 April 1941, there were only five Italian destroyers putting to sea for a raid because the sixth had ran aground earlier. And one of them aborted the mission early because of engine trouble, of the remaining four two were sunk by Swordfishes of HMS Eagle. Later five Wellesleys of the 223 Squadron attacked the remaining destroyers Tigre and Pantera while they were at anchor off Saudi Arabia coast south of Jeddah and transferring fuel and ammunition from Tigre to Pantera in order to scuttle Tigre and continue the operation only with Pantera. The attack foiled the Italian plan and their commander ordered abandonment and scuttling of both destroyers. The Wellesleys might well have sunk Tigre, which the Italians were already abandoning. Pantera might has been sunk by the British destroyer HMS Kingston. But it may be that both of the destroyers were already scuttled as the Italians claim.

The last active Wellesley unit was the No.47 Squadron Air Echelon flying A/S and convoy protection sorties over the Eastern Mediterranean from late April 1942 to the end of February 1943.

Tables:
Vickers Wellesley Production & Serial Numbers
Vickers Wellesley Technical & Performance Characteristics, there is an error in converting the capacity of the two auxiliary tanks of Wellesley from imperial gallons to litres which gives ten times too much volume in litres.
Vickers Wellesley Units & Representative Aircraft
Vickers Wellesley Units & Bases
Vickers Wellesley Kits and Decals

Two maps: the area of the East Africa Campaign, or the Horn of Africa and The Eastern Mediterranean.
The map of the area of the East Africa Campaign shows the locations of several Eritrean places mentioned in the text but of those locating in Abyssinia or British Somaliland only the locations of both capitals are shown. 

Airplanes with short production runs and fairly short service histories are good topics for books in the sense that their service histories are easy to describe in fairly short books. For example, describing the service history of the Messerschmitt Bf 109, Supermarine Spitfire, or Consolidated B-24 Liberator with the same accuracy would mean a massive series of thick books.

Barfield, Norman, Vickers Wellesley variants Aircraft Profile 256 (Windsor: Profile Publications, 1973).
Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships 1922-1946 (London: Conway Maritime Press, 1980).
FlyPast Special WELLINGTON Edited by Ken Ellis (Stamford: Key Publishing 2013).
Langtree, Christopher, The Kelly’s British J, K, & N Class Destroyers of World War II (Annapolis: Naval Institute
     Press, 2002).
Mason, Francis K, The British Bomber since 1914 (London: Putnam, 1994).
Orange, Vincent et.al., Winged Promises: History of No.14 Squadron, RAF 1915-1945 (London: The Royal Air
     Force Benevolent Fund Enterprises, 1996).
Playfair, Major-General I. S. O. et. al, The Mediterranean and Middle East Volume I (London: Her Majesty’s
     Stationery Offife, 1954).
Rohwer, Jürgen and Hummelchen, G., Chronology of the War at Sea, 1939–1945: The Naval History of World
   War Two (London: Greenhill Books, Second, revised, expanded edition 1992).
Roskill, Captain S.W., The War at Sea 1939 – 1945. Volume I The Defensive (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
     Office, 1954).
Shores, Christopher, Dust Clouds in the Middle East. The Air War for East Africa, Iraq, Syria, Iran and
   Madagascar, 1940 – 42 (London: Grub Street, 1996).
Warner, Graham, The Bristol Blenheim A complete history (Manchester: Crecy Publishing, Second edition
     2005).
Whitley, M.H., Destroyers of World War Two: an international encyclopedia (Annapolis, Md: Naval Institute
     Press, 1988). 

http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/40-10.htm
https://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/41-04.htm 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Convoy_BN_7 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauro-class_destroyer 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leone-class_destroyer 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shipwrecks_in_October_1940#20_October http://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?138168 

96 pages

The book begins with a short but interesting development history of the Pe-2. Interesting and to me new information on how Petlyakov got arrested in autumn 1937 and how long he resisted his interrogators before cracking and confessing his ‘anti-Soviet crimes’.

Then the story of how Petlyakov and his team designed the high altitude fighter/fighter-bomber ‘100’ while serving their time in the special prison, Special Technical Department of the NKVD. The plane was later radically redesigned to the dive-bomber PB-100, later re-designated as Pe-2. Also new to me was the information that the German air raids during summer of 1941 had effect on Pe-2 production. 

The authors go briefly through the main modifications of the Pe-2. One notice, KlimovM-105R vs PF, the poorer high altitude performance of the latter was the result not only of the poorer propeller efficiency but also of the lower full throttle height. According the authors the last big change to production Pe-2s was the changing of the shape of the leading edge of the outer wing section at the very end of 1944. My other Pe-2 sources say that these charges, designed Pe-2B, tested on Pe-2 c/n 19-223 and 14-226, were proved beneficial especially during take-off and landing, making them clearly easier and safer but because of the strong demand of Pe-2s it was decided not to disturb production by new outer wings and so the change was not implemented into production aircraft.

The combat descriptions are based predominantly only on Soviet information, but sometimes the authors has checked it against information from German documents. While I hope that authors would use sources of both sides so that readers would learn what really happened in this case the authors at least clearly state when given information is based solely on Soviet documents which is good and fair. And as said sometimes they give both the Soviet losses and claims and also the German claims and losses based on the information from German documents.

The 17 pages long Guards Bomber Air Regiments chapter is a bit list-like, but that is not surprising because the authors go through the combat histories of eight regiments. But it still shows how heavy and costly the first months, in fact even the first one and a half years of the Great Patriotic War were for the Soviet bomber units. E.g. 31st SBAP (later redesignated as 4th GvBAP), even if it dispersed all its SB bombers on the evening of 21 June 1941 and so none of its bombers was destroyed on the ground during Luftwaffe bombing raids the following morning, lost 88 percent of its original strength of 59 aircraft in less than a month. Of course also many successful operations are mentioned.

Interesting to note how effective the bombing attacks on Soviet airfields by the Luftwaffe were in Far North during the first couple months of the war when one thinks how meagre resources the Luftwaffe had there and they had no advance of surprise because the weather was very poor there during the first week of the Operation Barbarossa. The first attack on airfields was made on 23 June 1941 but only with two Ju 88s. I had seen the German claims earlier but because bomber crews often reported very optimistic results it is nice to have info on the real results.

On the page 17 “the port town of Vyborg and the railway station at Vipuri”, the latter should be Viipuri, and it is the Finnish name of the city which Russians call Vyborg.

The Mannerheim Line had been the main defensive line of the Finns during the Winter War (30 Nov. 1939 – 13 March 1940) but Soviets had blown up all those its bunkers that had not been destroyed during the fighting immediately after capturing them in mid-February 1940, so it did not have any significant defensive importance in 1944. The Finns’ main defensive line in Karelian Isthmus in 1944 was based on field fortifications because it was also the front line. Authors probably mean the VT-Line, which was Finns’ second defence line in 1944. It was partially completed line of permanent fortifications. But it was manned entirely by Finns. German reinforcements (a Sturmgeschütz-Brigade and an infantry division) arrived only after Soviets had broken through the VT-Line and conquered Viipuri/Vyborg.

On the bombing of the railway yards of Viipuri/Vyborg. The biggest attack was done by the ADD (Soviet long-range Air Force, their Bomber Command so to speak) when 142 of its planes bombed Viipuri during the night 14/15 June 1944 but the worst damage was achieved on 15 June, when 72 aircraft (Pe-2s, Il-4s and escort fighters) attacked on Maaskola railway yard at Viipuri/Vyborg and Karjala suburb, two ammunition trains were hit and began explode at Maaskola railway yard causing extensive damage. According to Inozemtsev, the 34th GvBAP (Guards Bomber Air Regiment) participated amongst others the quite an effective 17 June attack on Maaskola railway yard. It also made a rather ineffective, contrary to what crews reported, attack on Hovinmaa station on 19 June, the through pair of tracks was broken but it was repaired quickly. Only other results were a few damaged wooden houses and one wounded. And it seems that it participated the very effective raid on Elisenvaara railway yard on 20 June. There almost all of the tracks in the yard were damaged, only one thorough pair of tracks remained intact, 38  railway carriages and a couple engines were more or less damages, 167 people were killed, mostly civilians.
There were also other effective Pe-2 strikes in Finland during the June 1944 e.g. on 20 June bombing of Kirkonmaa which destroyed a mine depot, German mine transport ship ‘Otter’, two mine barges and eight motorboats. 

In the 13 pages long Guards Bomber Air Division chapter there are more descriptions of individual missions, both very successful and very costly ones and the developments of tactics used to reduce losses and increase effectiveness. But there were only two Pe-2 equipped Guards Bomber Air Division.

The authors explain the formation of the ‘punishment squadrons’ and their intended use. The punishments were much harsher with the Soviet and German armed forces than with the Western ones. And the battles on the Eastern front were bitterer.

I was surprised to learn that a recce squadron under 204th BAD (Bomber division) was still equipped with Su-2s in January 1943, then I remembered that while the type was at least mostly withdrawn from bomber and ground attack units by then it was still at that time used as a reconnaissance aircraft.

The massive attack by 3rd GvBAD on a German airfield on 14 September 1943 which according to Soviet intelligence information destroyed 50-55 German combat aircraft on Borovsk airfield (according to the caption on page 45) or on the airfield at Vorovsoye (according to the text on page 46) and according to the authors based on on German reports the Stukageschwader operating from the airfield temporarily lost its combat capability after as many as 20 of its Ju 87s were destroyed. Probably the unit hit was II./St.G. 1 which lost according to de Zeng IV and Stankey on the ground at Shatalovka-East airfield five Ju 87 Ds destroyed, seven more severely damaged and seven more moderately damaged and this reduced the Gruppe to the strength of a single Staffel. A loss of 20 planes did not usually made a circa 100 planes strong Geschwader inoperative but would critically weakened circa 33 aircraft strong Gruppe. Identifying places in ex-Soviet Union is sometimes difficult because Germans and Soviets sometimes used different names on certain locations and many places were renamed after fallen heroes after liberation.

Ps. I found out that I have more information on this attack.
Laurent Rizzotti 14th September 2009 16:31     Re: Soviet raid on Schatalowka airfield, 14 September 1943
 
Thanks Larry, that made the location of the action far clearer to me (and also explains why the two airfields were attacked at the same time, being only some km apart).

By the way I found on another Russian site a list of aircraft destroyed on the ground during this raid:
1./JG54   FW190A WNr 7053 - 20%
5./JG54   FW190A WNr 1092 - 30%
12./JG54  FW190A WNr 7277 - 100%
NAGr4    Bf109G-6 WNr 26006 - 40%; WNr 15891 - 10%; Bf108 WNr 2011 - 20%
II./StG1   Ju87D-3 WNr 1178 & 110865 - both 100%; WNr 110804 - 90%; WNr 110754 - 50%; WNr
          2675 – 40%; WNr 1241, 110036 & 110514 - all 20%
          Ju87D-5 WNr 130850, 130666 & 130761 - all 100%; WNr 130673 - 80%; WNr 130671 &                130670 - both 60%; WNr 130659 & 130851 - both 50%; WNr 130662 - 15%; WNr 130667 &              130672 - both 10%

So that made 10 aircraft destroyed/damaged beyond repair and 15 other damaged, not too bad.
The source: http://www.airwar.ru/history/av2ww/axis/germloss4/germloss9.html 

This information is from http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/showthread.php?t=18216

The chapter Guards Bomber Air Corps is also 13 pages long. The first one and a third pages of the chapter in fact tells the story of Aviation Armies, naturally mostly the 1st Bomber Aviation Army. When these were found too cumbersome it was decided to form less cumbersome Reserve Air Corps and 1st Bomber Aviation Army became 1st Bomber Air Corps (BAK) in September 1942 and became 2nd GvBAK on 5 February 1944. Again besides information on selected missions, both very successful and exceptionally costly, also on improvements in tactics. The other Guards Bomber Air Corps was 1st GvBAK, originally 2nd BAK which was formed October/November 1942 and became Guards formation on 3 September 1943. The famous 587th Women’s SBAP had became a seventh regiment of 2nd BAK by the end of 1942. At the end of June 1944 1st GvBAK was redesignated as 5th GvBAK in order to avoid numerical duplication as ADD merges with the VVS RKKA.

Next there is 16 pages of information on the guards reconnaissance units, reconnaissance was and is an important part of the aerial activity which often does not get the attention it deserves in aviation literature.

On the attack on Idriza airfield on 27 February 1944. On the Luftwaffe units based on Idritsa/Idriza airfield according to Henry L. deZeng IV; its anti-aircraft defence consisted only elements of gem.Flak-Abt. 294 at that time. So maybe the reports of dozens of flak batteries were exaggerating. What AA defences the nearby station and the town of Idritsa itself had I don’t know. Of the flying units based there 1. /Nahaufklärungsgruppe 5 had no losses in February 1944, 2./Nahaufklärungsgruppe 5 lost one Bf 109 G-6/U3 as destroyed or badly damaged by enemy action in February 1944 and sent one to overhaul. 1.(H)/Aufklärungsgruppe 31 lost one Fw 189 A-2 destroyed or badly damaged by enemy action in February 1944 and sent two to overhaul. I have no information of the possible losses of Nachtschlachtgruppe 1 but anyway it was not yet using Ju 87s but still using normal NSGr equipment, He 46s, Ar 66s etc.  According to Arro  Nachtschlachtgruppe 11 (estnisch) had left the airfield in early February 1944.
On the Ju 87 units of Luftflotte 1. I./SG 3 was based in February 1944 at Tartu/Dorpat, appr. 265 km NNW of Idriza. It lost (destroyed or badly damaged) in February 1944 five Ju 87 Ds because of enemy actions. 
II./SG 3 was based in February 1944 at Pskov/Pihkova appr. 170 km north of Idriza. It lost (destroyed or badly damaged) two Ju 87 Ds because of enemy actions in February 1944 and sent five other to overhaul. 
I./SG 5 was based in February 1944 at Korowje-Selo, 145 km north of Idriza and in February 1944 it lost (destroyed or badly damaged) three Ju 87 Ds because of enemy actions.
For the Germans Idriza airfield was a field airstrip (Feldflugplatz).

Not mentioned in the book but for comparison and because one Pe-2 guards unit mentioned in the book participated in it. On 2 July 1944, at Lappeenranta the attacking force consisted of 16 Pe-2s from 34th GvBAP and 36 Il-2s plus fighter escorts. Finns lost on ground two Bf 109 Gs and two war-booty Pe-2s and two Bf 109 Gs were so badly damaged that their repairs were completed only after the Continuation War. In this case Pe-2s dive bombed. At Immola, where Luftwaffe Gefechtsverband Kuhlmey was based, 44 Pe-2s made a level bombing attack and 28 Il-2s low-level attack. There three Finnish Brewster 239s were lost when a maintenance hangar was hit and burned. Germans lost nine planes: 4 Ju 87 Ds and 6 Fw 190s, and 15 of their other planes were very badly damaged, two less so and seven suffered only minor damage. In both cases bombing was accurate. At Immola the attack was more successful because the very well and cleverly planned attack using a feint and very carefully planned approach routes achieved complete surprise, only two of II./JG 54 Focke-Wulf Fw 190 As got airborne before Soviet planes attacked. So Il-2s could make three attacks. At Lappeenranta most of Finnish Bf 109 Gs were already airborne when Soviet attack force arrived and they began engage Il-2s during their first attack and so prevented any follow-up attacks.

While writing on the Lvov–Sandomierz Offensive the authors make overstatements. Army Group North Ukraine was forced to retreat but the fighting was hard and both sides suffered heavy losses, so it was not complete routed and while it lost, besides other losses, most of its XIII Corps in the Brody encirclement, it did not ceased to exist, it was simply renamed to Army Group A, probably mainly because it was mostly pushed out from Ukraine, northern half of it was fighting west of the Curzon Line, so definitely in Poland and the southern part on the north-eastern slopes of the Carpathians, so still just inside pre-1938 Poland or post-1945 Ukraine.

The last chapter is eight page long Guards Bomber Air Regiments of Naval Air Forces. The account of 73rd BAP KBF (later 12th GvBAP KBF), KBF = Soviet Baltic Fleet, attacks on the Narva railway bridge reminded me that I read decades ago a report of the Finnish liaison officer at the HQ of the Luftflotte 1 which informed the Finnish Air Force HQ of a German warning that the Soviet Air Force had several highly skilled units that could execute well planned and highly effective strikes, one example given was a cleverly and skilfully executed dive bombing attack on an important bridge somewhere in Baltic States. IIRC the attack began with low level attack, probably by Il-2s, against the bridge and the AA positions. When AA crews were distracted by this a sudden dive-bomber attack destroyed/badly damaged the bridge.

On the sinking of German 4,030 t, not 6,000 t as claimed in the caption of the front cover, AA ship (Schwimmende Flakbatterie / Flakschiff) Niobe in the port of Kotka on 16 July 1944. The high command of the Soviet Baltic Fleet Air Force was certain that Niobe would in fact be the Finnish coastal defence ship Väinämöinen, which has the displacement of 3,900 t, so it was almost the same size and sent a massive air group of 132 or 133 planes to sink it. The attack was well planned and executed and Niobe was sunk. According to Finns and some Soviet/Russian sources it was the four very low flying A-20Gs from the 51st Mine-Torpedo Aviation Regiment of the Baltic Fleet Air Force which achieved the fatal hits with two 1000 kg bombs. According to Kotelnikov and pseudonym Warjag at www.forum-marinearchiv.de Niobe was hit by two FAB-250s and two FAB-1000s. The former were dropped by Pe-2s and the latter by Bostons.  Niobe, ex- Gelderland, was originally a Dutch protected cruiser, not a coastal defence destroyer, the term used by the authors it the text, Finnish Väinämöinen was a coastal defence ship, a kind of mini-battleship. While in the authors used the right term on Väinämöinen in the text and the caption of the cover image, in the caption on the page 84 the term coastal defence destroyer is used. 

The authors also give three pages long description of the Operation Arcturus which consisted five big raids by the Baltic Fleet Air Force against the port of Liepaja/Libau in October and December 1944. Liepaja was the main supply port for the isolated German Army Group North, later renamed as AG Kurland. The description includes German defences, Soviet preparations, the Soviet planes participating the raid on 30 October, a recollection of one Soviet pilot of the 22 December raid, the number of German fighters usually participating the defence, German fighter pilots claims versus the real Soviet losses during a couple raids etc. There is also a table showing for each raid the number of Soviet aircraft participating, how many of these were Pe-2s or Il-2s, the total number of Soviet aircraft lost and the number of German ships claimed sunk. After the table in the text the results according to Germans.

The authors give a brief descriptions of the main organizational changes with the Soviet air forces and the beginning of the tradition of awarding the title of Guards units to combat units after a success in battle in September 1941. The first six aviation units were awarded the title on 6 December 1941.

One piece of Interesting information is that members of Guards units got 1½ - 2 fold increase in their financial allowances.

Many interesting but small photographs with informative captions. There are also a couple wartime instructional drawings on tactics used by Pe-2 units.

30 colour profiles by Andrey Yurgenson with several camo patterns and with interesting individual markings in ten cases.

There is one appendix in the book, Scheme of Pe-2 Guards units transition. It shows when units got their guards status, old and new unit designations and if the unit was formed after the beginning of the Great Patriotic war, 22 June 1941, roughly when it was formed. I did not check the table but noticed that of the naval units, in the table 34th Guards BAP previous designation is given as 34th BAP Baltic Fleet Air Force but in the text as 34th BAP of the Air Forces of the Pacific Fleet and that it stayed a part of that throughout the WW2.

In the book there are the following scale drawings: a 3-view of Pe-2 18th series, a 2-view of Pe-2R based on the 110th series and a side view of Pe-2R based on the 83rd series. And also an index, not all-encompassing but reasonably comprehensive.

So a good nice book on its subject, worth getting. The authors give numerous times the number of sorties, the amount of bombs dropped, the number of planes and aircrews lost and claimed results during the given timeframe by the given unit or formation.


Sources:
Sota-arkisto T 19280/49 Yhteysupseerien raportit LFl. 5 ja LFl. 1 22.06.41-27.12.42

Andersson, Lennart, Soviet Aircraft and Aviation 1917 – 1941 (London: Putnam Aeronautical Books,
     reprinted (with additions) 1997).
Arro, Hendrik, Viron lentäjät taistelujen tulessa (Helsinki: Vehari Oy, 1999).
Geust, Carl-Fredrik, ’Neuvostoliiton kaukotoimintailmavoimat kesän 1944 suurhyökkäyksessä Karjalan
     kannaksella’, English summary ’The Soviet Long-range Air Force During the Great Offensive on the
     Karelian Isthmus in Summer 1944’, Sotahistoriallinen aikakauskirja 23 (2004) pp. 143 – 158.
Gordon, Yefim, Soviet Air Power in World War 2 (Hinckley: Midland Publishing, 2008).
Gordon, Yefim and Khazanov, Dmitri, Soviet Combat Aircraft of the Second World War. Volume Two
    (Leicester: Midland Publishing, 1999).
Gordon, Yefim and Komissarov, Sergey, Ilyushin Il-2 and Il-10 Shturmovik (Ramsbury: Crowood Press, 2004).
Haapanen, Atso, Kesäsota . Suomen ilmavoimien sotalennot kesällä 1944 (Tampere: Apali, 2006).
Inozemtsev, I. G., Karjalan kannaksen yllä, operaation aattona 1944, suomeksi kääntänyt: Paavo        Kajakoski  http://www.virtualpilots.fi/hist/WW2History-punanakokulma_kannaksenylla4.html extracted on        15 November 2004.
Kauranen, Heikki and Vesen, Jukka, Simolan pommitukset 19. – 20.6.1944 (Tampere: Apali, 2006).
Khazanov, Dmitriy B., Air War Over Kursk. Turning Point in the East (Bedford: SAM Publications, 2010).
Kotelnikov, Vladimir, Lend-Lease and Soviet Aviation in the Second World War (Solihull: Helion, 2007).
Kuusela, Kari, Wehrmachtin panssarit Suomessa. Saksalaiset panssariyksiköt Suomessa 1941 – 1944. Panzer
     units in Finland 1941 – 1944 (Helsinki: Wiking-Divisioona, 2000).
Lappi, Ahti, ’Viipurin ilmatorjunta’, Eero Elfvengren, Eeva Tammi (toim.) Viipuri 1944 (Helsinki: WSOY).
Manninen, Pentti, ‘2.7.1944: Lappeenrannan lentokentän pommitus, Suomen Ilmailuhistoriallinen Lehti 
     2/2001 pp. 8 – 13.
Smith, Peter C., Petlyakov Pe-2 ’Peshka’ (Ramsbury: Crowood Press, 2003).
Stapfer, Hans-Heiri, Petlyyakov Pe-2 in action Aircraft Number 181 (Carrollton, Texas: squadron/signal, 2002).
Valtonen, Hannu, Luftwaffen Pohjoinen Sivusta (Jyväskylä: Keski-Suomen Ilmailumuseo, 1997).
de Zeng IV, Henry L. and Stankey, Douglas G., Dive-bomber and Ground-attack Units of the Luftwaffe 1933-
     1945 Volume 1 (Hersham: Ian Allan, 2009).
Henry L. deZeng IV, Luftwaffe Airfields 1935-45 Russia (incl. Ukraine, Belarus & Bessarabia)
     https://ww2.dk/Airfields%20-%20Russia%20and%20Ukraine.pdf  extracted on 28 September 2020.
Henry L. deZeng IV, Luftwaffe Airfields 1935-45 The Baltic States – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania 
     http://www.ww2.dk/Airfields%20-%20Baltic%20States%20-%20Estonia,%20Latvia%20and%20Lithuania.pdf 
     extracted on 12 December 2020.

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=65762&highlight=niobe extracted on 20 October 2012.
http://www.netherlandsnavy.nl/Gelderland.htm  extracted on 26 July 2010.
http://www.german-navy.de/kriegsmarine/ships/aabattery/niobe/history.html  extracted on 26 July 2010.
https://www.flightforum.fi/topic/30561-douglas-a-20-havoc-l%C3%B6ytynyt/   extracted on 11 October 2019.
https://www.forum-marinearchiv.de/smf/index.php?topic=1095.15  extracted on 4 December 2020.
http://www.kurkijoki.fi/kylat/elisen03/elis_v_pomm.html extracted on 11 November 2019.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-2  extracted on 11 September 2020.
http://www.ww2.dk/air/attack/stg1.htm  extracted on 14 May 2011.
http://www.ww2.dk/oob/bestand/stuka/bststg1.html  extracted on 14 May 2011.
http://www.ww2.dk/oob/bestand/stuka/bistg1.html  extracted on 14 May 2011.
http://www.ww2.dk/oob/bestand/stuka/biistg1.html  extracted on 14 May 2011.
http://www.ww2.dk/oob/bestand/stuka/biiistg1.html  extracted on 14 May 2011.
http://www.ww2.dk/air/attack/stg2.htm  extracted on 23 June 2011.
http://www.ww2.dk/air/attack/stg77.htm  extracted on 1 October 2017.
https://ww2.dk/Airfields%20-%20Russia%20and%20Ukraine.pdf  extracted on 28 September 2020.
http://www.ww2.dk/Airfields%20-%20Baltic%20States%20-%20Estonia,%20Latvia%20and%20Lithuania.pdf 
     extracted on 12 December 2020.
https://ww2.dk/air/recon/nagr5.htm  extracted on 28 September 2020.
https://ww2.dk/oob/bestand/aufkl/bstnagr5.html  extracted on 28 September 2020.
https://ww2.dk/oob/bestand/aufkl/b1nagr5.html  extracted on 28 September 2020.
https://ww2.dk/oob/bestand/aufkl/b2nagr5.html  extracted on 28 September 2020.
https://ww2.dk/air/attack/nsgr11.htm  extracted on 28 September 2020.
https://www.ww2.dk/oob/bestand/aufkl/b1ag31.html  extracted on 28 September 2020.
http://www.ww2.dk/oob/bestand/jagd/bstjg54.html  extracted on 2 March 2009.
http://www.ww2.dk/oob/bestand/jagd/bijg54.html  extracted on 22 March 2009.
http://www.ww2.dk/oob/bestand/jagd/biijg54.html  extracted on 29 April 2013.

96 pages. Two appendices, Luftwaffe Air-Sea Rescue Do 24 Squadrons and Dutch Navy Do 24 Aircraft Groups. Bibliography

Very nice book on an interesting aircraft. It tells the story of service of Do 24 with the Dutch navy (14 pages), the RAAF (4 pages), as transport plane supplying Germans at Narvik during the spring of 1940 (3 pages), service with the Seenotdienst (German Air-Sea Rescue Service) (34 pages) and KG 200 (1 page). Also its service with the French naval air service after the WWII (3 pages) and with the Spanish Air Force from 1944 to 1969 are told (2½ pages). Even services of single examples used in Sweden and the Soviet Union are mentioned (1 page). The British and Norwegian service (¾ page). The British used two Do 24s with German crews as rescue cover for mine clearing operations in Norwegian waters after the war, later the planes, still flown by Germans came under Norwegian control. There might have been two more Do 24s used by British locally at Bodo. Three Do 24s captured at Schleswig were flown to England for evaluation. One of those was test flown by Eric Brown, a famous British test pilot and in his book he tells that he liked it and concludes his assessment: “To me, the Do 24 was virtually viceless, and I certainly never met a German or Dutch pilot who had anything but praise for it…” But in fact he noticed earlier in the text that while generally its take-off characteristics were excellent “…Before we got up on the step the boat assumed a steep nose-up attitude, giving very poor view ahead, but once on the step that attitude decreased markedly…”. Development and production is dealt with on eight pages. 30 colour profiles, six of Dutch, 19 of German, two of Spanish, on each of Australian, Swedish and French ones, on 15 pages. Some combat reports of the Allies on Do 24 shoot downs. And a few German pilots and crewmembers recollections. (e.g. on pages 54-55). Even an appraisal by a RAAF pilot is there. It is the most critical assessment of the characteristics of Do 24 I have seen but even it is not overly critical.

Some especially interesting points for me were:
During the occupation of Corsica in July and August 1943, for troops transported there by Ju 52/3ms and Me 323s neither life vests nor dinghies were provided to.
Aircraft and boats of the Seenotdienst rescued 11,561 survivors from the sea during the World War 2 of which 3,815 were Allied personnel, the book gives also numbers per operational areas.

As a Finn I noticed that all Finnish place names are written correctly except Kupoio-Rissala, should be Kuopio-Rissala. 

I cannot say much on the colour profiles but I was surprised how light the ‘mud blue grey’ is in the profiles 5 to 7 i.e. Dutch Do 24K-1s in 1941-42 camouflage. It is lighter and greyer than the upper colour of the Do 24 I saw in 2005 at the Soesterberg Military Aviation Museum or the colour of the profile on the Do 24 site in 2001 and 2020.

Only error I noticed is not directly connected to Do 24. HMS Warspite did not participate the First naval Battle of Narvik which cut the German troops occupying Narvik out. During it five destroyers of the Royal Navy sank two German destroyers and the supply ship Rauenfels. She participated the Second naval Battle three days later when it attacked with nine destroyers and the other eight German destroyers were sunk as is told in the book.

Warmly recommended for those interesting in flying boat operations, the desperate fight of Dutch against Japanese in 1941-42, the activities of the Seenotdienst or Dornier Do 24 itself and its use.

Sources:
Brown, Eric Captain, Testing for Combat (Shrewsbury: Airlife, 1994).
Geust, Carl-Fredrik and Gennadiy Petrov. Red Stars Vol 2: German Aircraft in the Soviet Union (Tampere: Apali
​     Oy, 1998).

http://www.dornier24.com/  ex-http://masterdrew.topcities.com/pages/… Retrieved 29 November 2001.

80 pages.

A blow-by-blow description of the air fighting between Airacobras and Zero-sens in New Guinea in 1942.

The structure of this book is the normal for the Duel series.

The beginning of the book is very good, giving interesting information on the circumstances in which the combatants fought. Both sides suffered from bad food and had severe health problems, but on the Japanese side the situation was worse. On both sides there were severe supply problems and initially both sides suffered equipment and replacement aircraft shortages, but over the time, the massive production superiority of the U.S. began to take effect. The airfield situation was better on the Allies side, being better equipped for the construction, improvements and repairs of airfields. Also they had much better early-warning system, not because they had radar – radar performance was much hampered by the Owen Stanley Ranges – but by the Australian spotter network. To their merit U.S. leaders and pilots heeded the advice given by surviving Australian P-40 pilots, which they had learned by hard way in their previous fierce battles against Zeros over Port Moresby. This was by no means self-evident, e.g. Spitfire pilots who later arrived from Europe to Australia and India did not at first believe the warnings about the phenomenal agility of Japanese fighters to their own cost.

Also interesting is the information that the results of Japanese strafing attacks against Port Moresby airfields were minimal because of the effectiveness of AA defences there. Earlier they had been fairly effective and Airacobras made few fairly successful strafing attacks against Lae airfield. Maybe the USAAF had also learned disperse its aircraft better. 

In Chronology it was interesting to note that the first flight of P-39 was within a week a year earlier than that of A6M.

Design & Development chapter is generally good.
On page 13 there are mostly the same interesting quotes from summary reports submitted by several Airacobra pilots in May 1942 on Airacobra vs. Zero as given by Dunn in his research article on http://www.j-aircraft.com site. Claringbould adds some unsurprising Airacobra pilots’ comments on Zeros manoeuvrability and rate of climb. Overall the book contains a fairly reasonable number of recollections and contemporary reports from pilots of both sides.

There are some errors in the technical descriptions:
The reason why the wing machineguns of P-39 were so far out was not the propeller arc but the wing fuel tanks. The propeller arc itself would have allowed clearly more inward placement.

On the ammunition supply of 20 mm Hispano. The cannon in the drawing on page 19 is a Hispano but the ammunition supply looks like that of the 37 mm M4 cannon. It might be that the Hispano used same kind of endless belt magazine as M4 but I doubt that. IMHO it is much more probable that the Hispano used the standard 60 rounds drum magazine used with it in French fighters like Morane-Saulnier M.S.406 and Dewoitine D.520 and the early cannon armed British fighters like Westland Whirlwind Mk. I, Spitfire VBs and very early Bristol Beaufighters. And the 6th Part of Report A.A.E.E./774 BOSCOMBE DOWN Airacobra A.H.573 (Allison V-1710 – E.4.) Weights and loadings data in its paragraph 5. Loading Details under the 20 m/m Cannon Ammunition states: ‘Drum and 60 rds. 54 lb’. I had difficulties to find a good photo of the weapon bay of a P-400 but in the end I found one in the same folder that contains the Report A.A.E.E./774.  It shows a normal 60 rounds drum magazine. Also the Soviet technical description had a cutaway drawing of the P-400 which seems to show a drum magazine on the Hispano. And as the 20 mm cartridge was significantly slimmer and significantly shorter than of the 37 mm, it could not anyway use the same magazine than the 37 mm ammunition. The photo of the weapon bay of a P-400 also clearly shows why the British complained about poor access to areas requiring maintenance.

The book shows two rates of fire to the 20 mm Type 99-1 cannon, 540 and 490 rpm. According to Williams & Gustin, the right figure is 520 rpm, 490 is the rpm for the longer barrelled and heavier Type 99-2 used by later A6M models from A6M3a Model 22a onwards. Contrary to Claringbould claim it seems that 20 mm Type 99-1 cannons in A6M3 were still drum magazine fed but used bigger 100 rounds drum, the belt-fed cannon with 125 rounds per gun came later according to Williams & Gustin, Nohara, Millman and Mikesh. Also Kohjiro Funatsu, a former IJN maintenance crew had bitter memories of the 100 rounds ammunition drums of Zero, it was too heavy for easy loading, making loading process very painful.

The specifications figures of Airacobra are identical to those obtained from the official tests of the P-39D A.C. No. 41-6722, which was powered by earlier Allison V-1710-35 but the climb data (5 min 7 sec to 15,000 ft) but this might well be a misunderstanding, in the above mentioned test report the climb time is marked as 5.7 min meaning 5 min 42 sec. Of course it is possible that the author has had access to a test report of a P-39D-2, this subtype was powered stronger V-1710-63, which with 100/125 fuel could produce more power at low level than -35 because it could tolerate higher manifold pressure but its supercharger could produce the maximum manifold pressure only up to 2500 feet so the maximum speed stayed identical. Nevertheless the speed and climb rate were better low down. So it is possible that Claringbould has found a test report of a P-39D-2 showing the time to 15,000 ft as 5.11 or 5.12 min but I somewhat doubt it. Wagner gives for P-39K, which had the same V-1710-63 engine as in P-39D-2 but was 200 lb heavier than P-39D, the same 5.7 min. to 15,000 ft as for P-39D. P-39 D-2 had 121.5 lb heavier basic weight than the plain D according to Dean, so P-39K was not much heavier than D-2, so very probably D-2 had the same rate of climb as K and so the same as the plain D.
Soviet data shows 363.5 mph at 13780 ft with Allison V-1710-E4 powered Airacobra. That means P-400. British test results for P-400 gave the maximum speed of 355 mph at 13, 000 feet.
On A6M3 range, almost all my books on Zero give a different figure for the range of A6M3, Claringbould’s figure is one of the middle ones. Francillon 1987 and 1991 gives normal range for Model 21 as 1,160 miles, the same as Claringbould gives as the range. Francillon 1987 and 1991 give maximum range for Model 21 as 1,930 statute miles; 1987 gives for Model 32 1,477 statute miles, a reduction of 453 statute miles, Noharas figures are 1930 and 1284 miles, a reduction of 646 miles.

Maps 
The map on page 28 gives according to its caption the strategic situation in April 1942 but e.g. the Gilbert & Ellis Islands were occupied by Japanese in December 1941, Rabaul on New Britain in late January of 1942 and Shortland Islands in Northern Salomons at the end of March, and had at least begun the occupation of Bougainville during March. So Japanese flags should be at least on the Bismarck Archipelago, after all Rabaul had become the Japanese bastion in the area, also on the Gilbert & Ellis Islands, it was already part of the Japanese outer defence perimeter. The situation in the Northern Salomons in early April was more so and so but still the Japanese were already there. The southern part of the Salomons were still in British/Australian hands.
The map on page 30, there is a plenty of room on the map for more place names mentioned in the text, e.g. Rorona airfield, Cape Ward Hunt, Ora Bay and Cape Nelson. In the text it is revealed that the airfield situated to the west of Port Moresby. And Milne Bay is marked a bit too much south. The locations and layouts of the main airfields around Port Moresby are shown on the map on the next page, very interesting piece of information.

 In The Combatants chapter on US pilots only the flight time during the advanced training phase, 70 hours, is given, I would like to know their total flight time US fighter pilots had when they arrived to their first 1-line unit in early 1942.
But there are nice drawings of the cockpits of P-39D and A6M2 with the explanations of the gauges and switches shown. 
The two short biographies are of 1Lt, later Captain, Arthur “Art” E. Andres and Lt, later Lt Cdr, Shiro Kawai.

Combat

This 32-page section is pretty good, the essence of the book I think. And the main reason I bought the book. A bit more on tactics used would have been beneficial, I think. On page 47 in the caption of the diagram it should read that sticking to one’s leader not to one’s wingman was essential in air combat and the caption of the diagram on page 53 should have explanation how IJNAF pilots loosen their three plane shotai formation from the tight British style “vic” over areas where there was a risk of combat. That was because combat experience in China had demonstrated to them that the tight “vic” formation was too rigid and so they had adopted a looser formation whenever they expected action, wingmen, especially No.3, moving further away and higher than the leader and so the formation gained more flexibility.

On 26 May 1942 a P-39 mission was to escort five troop-laden C-47s to Wau. Claringbould describes the combat between escort and Zeros giving claims and real losses of fighters but says nothing on the success or failure of the escort mission, in other words whether the C-47s succeeded to carry out their mission or not.

On 16 June 1942 there was a big air combat over Port Moresby. One can count from Claringbould’s text that the USAAF losses were five Airacobras lost and two damaged with wounded pilots bringing them back to their base, but unusually he does not give the claims. IMHO it would be interesting to know what Japanese claims were during this mission, which produced the heaviest one-day losses for Airacobras operating over New Guinea. Fortunately both Millman and the Pacific Wrecks site disclose that Japanese pilots claimed 17 plus two probables while losing none of their own. It seems that USAAF pilots made no claims. So the Japanese were clearly overclaiming, but by no means outlandishly, bearing in mind that it was rather large air battle, 21 Zeros vs. 32 Airacobras, which took place partly over the sea and partly deep in the Allied territory.

Previously I have seen the P-400 joke more often as ‘the P-400 was nothing more than a P-40 with a Zero on its tail’ but of course substituting P-39 for P-40 is technically more correct and I have also seen it in that form in the past.

Statistics and Analysis chapter

I am puzzled that in the Statistics and Analysis chapter Claringbould at first on page 75 writes that “In 1942 in New Guinea a total 44 Airacobras was lost in combat compared to just 15 Zero-sens, constituting a loss ratio almost three-to-one...”. But on page 76 he writes that of the 44 Aircobras lost in combat in 1942 in New Guinea only 15 were shot down by Zeros. Who shot down the rest, ground fire got some but the first JAAF fighters unit, the 1st Chutai of the 11th Sentai, became active in New Guinea on 26 December 1942 and it did not claim Airacobras during the last few days of 1942. Japanese air gunners seems to have got a few but what about the rest. Did the combat losses include those destroyed on ground by bombing and strafing? But Claringbould notices earlier that the results of Japanese strafing attacks against Port Moresby airfields were minimal. Some Airacobras were destroyed by bombing, that is true but still the figures seem not to add up. And it seems that the 15 Zero losses does not include losses on ground because already the first Airacobra strafing attack on Lae on 30 April 1942 destroyed three Zeros according to Claringbould and according to Tagaya burned one and wrecked another Zero. Lae and other Japanese airfields in the area were also bombed rather regularly. The Zero pilot losses were shown on the Amazon.com page in image 3, which is unfortunately no longer shown. According to it Tainan lost altogether 44 pilots in New Guinea, 13 of them to the Airacobras of the 8th and 35th FGs. Others include e.g. seven to RAAF Kittyhawks, four to B-17 and B-25 gunners, seven to operational causes and five to marginal weather. For the rest either the table was partly blocked so I could not see what happened to them or was it that I just did not write the reasons of the loss of the rest down when I looked the image, I cannot remember for sure which but the reason was probably the first one. From Claringbould’s text one sees that some were lost to ground fire. 

And  pseudonym Wildcat on the thread http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/aviation/p-39-zero-killer-40531.html writes: 'According to the excellent book "Eagles of the Southern sky" by Luca Ruffato & Michael Claringbould, during the period 1 April to 15 November 1942, the Tainan Kokutai shot down 38 Airacobras for a loss of 12 Zero's (1 by collision). These are confirmed victories, not claims.' At first I thought that the figure probably includes victories over Guadalcanal but in another thread, https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/p-39-vs-german-fighters.47960/page-3, Greg Boeser clearly stated that the figure is on the results of combats over New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago. So it does not include losses suffered in the fighting over the Solomons. Altogether according to Boeser, based on Luca Ruffato and Michael J. Claringbould, Eagles of the Southern Sky: The Tainan Naval Air Group in WWII Volume One: New Guinea (2012) the Tainan pilots shot down 81 enemy a/c of all types over New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago, losing 42 pilots to all causes. These 81 shot down aircraft were: 17 Kittyhawks/Warhawks, 38 P-39/P-400s, five A-24s, one Hudson, 10 B-25s, 5 B-26s, 5 B-17s. The Tainan Naval Air Group lost 11-13 pilots to P-39s during this period. This is more or less in line with JoeB’s figures he gave in 2007 in threads https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/how-good-was-japanese-aviation.730/page-12 and
http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/aviation/allied-vs-japanese-losses-7203.html, namely: 'stats from Apr 30-June 1 '42, 45 e/a claimed, 37 of them Zeroes, for 26 P-39's (13 pilots) lost in air combat. The Tainan Kokutai lost 11 pilots in this period, w/ the 8th the only Allied fighter unit it faced after May 3.' According to Boesner Ruffato & Claringbould agrees that Tainan lost 11 pilots during that timeframe, but they say that of those seven were lost to Airacobras, two to B-25s and two to ground fire. According to Hata and Izawa the Tainan Air Group lost over eastern New Guinea from April through July 1942 ‘…twenty aircraft that either destroyed themselves or failed to return to base.’ Destroying oneself meant in Japanese parlance either that other Japanese pilots saw that the plane was shot down or that they saw that in a desperate situation, e.g. when his plane was so badly damaged or suffered so serious technical problems that the pilot concluded that his plane could not reach the base he deliberately dived onto ground.

I could have read the book one more time and count the P-39/P-400 losses, but did not bother. Instead I went through the P-39/P-400 losses in New Guinea in 1942 on the Pacific Wrecks site. When it in few cases does not give a clear reason, I checked what Claringbould says. All Airacobra losses are not mentioned on the site. Results were: 
P-39s/P-400s reason of loss:
Zeros 20
Possibly Zeros 5
Forced landing because of Zero, plane not recovered, so lost 1
Ground fire 3
Friendly fire 1 possible
Engine 4
Probably engine 1
Weather 4

Millman writes that during fighter combats in May and June the Tainan Kokutai accounted 29 Airacobras for the loss of eight of its own pilots. Maybe his source is Ruffato & Claringbould. So it seems that Claringbould’s figure 15 is too low.
According to Pacific Wrecks there is one case in which a P-39 claimed in Eagles of the Southern Sky to be lost over Port Moresby in fact crashed into sea off Queensland. 

It is easier to believe that A6Ms had an upper hand, IJNAF pilots were at this stage better trained than their USAAF counterparts and they had already got significant combat experience when for almost all US pilots New Guinea was their first combat assignment. And Airacobra was not in its element in high altitude interception missions. Even if USAAF pilots used more modern finger-four formation, braking up into two two-fighter elements and the Japanese three plane shotai, the difference was not so marked because combat experience in China had taught the Japanese to enter combat in a more open and so more flexible formation. Airacobra was sturdier and had armour protection, self-sealing fuel tanks and a good radio. It also dived faster. It was also somewhat faster at lower altitudes. So at lower altitudes the planes were more evenly matched. Of course at quite low level Airacobra lost its best way to disengage, namely diving away.

Aftermath chapter

The first deliveries of P-39Q were made in May 1943, so the 35th FG was hardly operating them in April 1943, P-39N, which had almost identical performance, was possible, its first deliveries had been in November 1942. Claringbould rightly notice that neither Zero nor Airacobra units could achieve air superiority over New Guinea in 1942 and on the Allies side situation eased when US forces landed onto Tulagi, Gavutu and Guadalcanal on 7 August 1942 and forced the IJNAF divert its resources there. In late December 1942 first P-38s arrived in New Guinea and in late summer of 1943 the first P-47s. He might somewhat underestimate the significance of P-39s during the first part of 1943. But in 1943 the main opponent of the Allies was the JAAF, not Zeros of the IJNAF. At the turn of the year 1942/43 the Japanese Army Air Force had accepted to take the sole responsibility for fighter operations in New Guinea from the badly over-stretched IJNAF. So Airacobra actions in 1943 are not part of the subject of this book. Maybe he mentions these combats briefly in his new P-47D Thunderbolt vs Ki-43-II Oscar NEW GUINEA 1943–44 DUEL 103 book. On the other hand, Claringbould gives almost a whole page of interesting information about the use of the P-39 in 1944 in New Guinea.

Anyway Airacobra had its moments of glory in air combats during the first part of 1943. Stanaway in his P-39 Airacobra Aces and Nijboer write that between February and August 1943 P-39 pilots claimed more than 40 of the 50 kills credited to USAAF units between those months, but this is hardly true because e.g. on 21 July P-38 pilots claimed 21 or 22 Japanese aircraft and 16 August P-38 and P-47 pilots claimed 15, and on 6 February, while Airacobra pilots claimed 11 Japanese planes, other USAAF fighter pilots claimed additional 13. But up to late summer 1943 Airacobras still made some significant contributions in air fighting over New Guinea. During the air battle over Wau in 6 Feb 1943 Airacobra pilots from the 40th Fighter Squadron/35th Fighter Group made 11 claims against JAAF fighters and bombers but during this engagement USAAF pilots heavily overclaimed, making altogether 24 claims, plus 3 claims made by Australian AA gunners, for seven Japanese planes lost. Another important combat was over Tsili Tsili on 15 August 1943 when Airacobra pilots made 14 claims for nine Japanese losses, six Ki-48 light bombers and three Ki-43 fighters, but three P-39Ns and two C-47s were also lost plus a P-39N was damaged and crash-landed at Tsili Tsili Airfield. The latter may have been a written-off because some sources say that four P-39s were lost.

Photos are well chosen, but many are reproduced rather small. Of course this book is rather small and so space limited, maybe some photos could have left out and so create space for reproducing some photos larger. There is a nice aerial reconnaissance photo of Lae airfield taken in May 1942.

Warmly recommended especially as a good blow-by-blow history of the air fighting over New Guinea in 1942.

Sources:
6th Part of Report A.A.E.E./774 BOSCOMBE DOWN Airacobra A.H.573 (Allison V-1710 – E.4.) Weights and
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     database of The National Archives, Kew this folder holds  Chesapeke aircraft: performance trials,
     Chesapeke, in fact Chesapeake Mk.I, was an export version of Vought SB2U Vindicator. On the other hand
     the description of AVIA 18/725 is  Airacobra aircraft: performance and handling trials. On the front page
     of the 1st Part of Report A.A.E.E./774 BOSCOMBE DOWN Airacobra A.H.573 (Allison V-1710  E.4.)
   Preliminary Handling Tests there is a written archive ID AVIA 18/725. But also e.g. on the front page of
     9th part of the report, namely Climb and level speed performance there is a written archive ID AVIA
     18/724.
Pilot’s Flight Operating Instructions for Army Model P-39Q-1.
Soviet Airacobra with Allison V-1710-E4.Technical description. That means P-400.
US Reciprocating Engine Characteristics 1 Jan. 1949.
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     1984).
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https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/should-the-p39-have-been-able-to-handle-the-zero-was-it-training-or-performance.36984/page-18  Retrieved 1 April 2018.
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96 pages, 30 colour profiles, 15 colour drawings of unit badges, two appendices (S.79 warship kills 1940-41 and S.79 merchant ship kills 1940-41, in fact the tables also include damaged ships, the warship table down to splinter damage) and index.

Since childhood I have been interested in this sleek-looking Italian trimotor. And I was happy to see that again Mattioli has done a very good job. Again he has been trying to dig out what S.79 Sparvieri actually achieved by checking Italian claims against Allies’ records and clearly states which claims can be verified from Allies’ reports. There are still few overclaimings left but these are minor errors.

p. 11 Spanish battleship Jaime I
After S.79s bombed the ship in Almeria harbour it was according to Spanish Wikipedia able to reach the Cartagena naval base on its own power, not towed there as Mattioli writes.
Silverstone mentions the damage by bombings at Almeria in May 1937 but does not mention how she got to Cartagena. Conway does not even mention the bombings, only the explosion that wrecked Jaime I in June in Cartagena harbour. So I cannot say who is right.

s.57  While in his text Mattioli writes that 11° Stormo S.79s scored the Regia Aeronautica’s first ship ‘kill’ of the war when they damaged destroyer HMS Diamond off Malta on 17 June 1940. On the other hand, this attack is not mentioned in the book’s Appendix A S.79 warship kills 1940-41 -table. According to Naval-history.net HMS Diamond suffered only slightly damage on 11 June 1940 and it makes no mention of June 17. According to en.wikipedia, she was slightly damaged by air attacks near Malta on 11 and 17 June 1940, so its combat capabilities was unlikely to be affected by the damage, so IMHO not even a ship ‘kill’ with quotation marks. Chronik des Seekrieges 1939-1945 does not mention any damage of HMS Diamond on those days. Also, none of the books on my source list mention the possible damage on 17 June.

s. 72 The text states on July 6, 1940 that S.79s ‘were credited with having hit one of the naval vessels’. In fact,  British ships have not suffered any damage and correctly nothing is mentioned in the Appendix A.

On the Appendix A, very light damage are included into the table. E.g. battleship HMS Malaya suffered only splinter damage on 8 July 1940 – As it is written in naval-history.net: “During the day, the fleet was under air attacks from a total of 126 high level bombers. In one attack fire control cables were damaged by near misses and repaired.” So only slight damage that was repaired immediately, but the classification is ‘damaged’ in the table.

I checked the table for HMS Ark Royal and HMS Liverpool, for Liverpool it is OK, but for Ark Royal there are IMHO a few trivial matters. For 1 August 1940, Mattioli notes in the text that “shrapnel from the S.79s’ bombs inflicted modest internal damage on Ark Royal.” My other sources do not mention any damage. HMS Ark Royal could launch a planned air attack the following night as planned, so the damage she suffered had no operational impact. In the table, this is marked as “internal damage”, which tells very little about how dangerous/disabling the damage was. IMHO a better damage classification would be (insignificant)?, minor, moderate, heavy etc.

On 9 July 1940 HMS Hood, Resolution and Ark Royal suffered only splinter damage, the table and text say “minor damage”, which is practically the same thing.

On 27 November 1940 HMS Ark Royal suffered again only from near misses, but this time a few of those were very near misses indeed. On the page 157 in Apps’ book there is a sketch map showing the impact points of the misses in relation to the Ark Royal. Some bomb salvos were very close to hitting the ship and a few bombs exploded only appr. 10 yards from her hull.  Again in the table damage classification is “internal damage”. This time maybe at least partly meaning damage caused by the mining effect of so near misses.

So only few minor complains.

I was at first puzzled by the captions of two colour profiles (profiles 1, 12) which say that the planes illustrated have a large three-tone camouflage (green, brown and yellow), whereas the drawings themselves show a two-tone band camouflage (brown and yellow). Only after looking at page 46 in Sgarlato’s Italian Aircraft of World War II, which has a small colour plan view of the standard Italian large three-tone band camouflage, although the places of the green and brown are reversed to that in Mattioli’s book and at the b/w photos in this book on pages 19, 24 and 26 I understood that the Italian large three-tone band camouflage shows clearly as a three colour scheme only when viewed from the right or above. But IMHO probably even when viewed from the left,  the engine cowlings and the upper parts of the engine nacelles should have been painted with the third colour, in the case of the profiles 1, 2, 5 and 12 green, at least some of them. But I am a total amateur in the Italian camouflage schemes, so this is just an opinion of a total amateur. But any case the lack of any three-way profile drawings is IMHO a shortcoming.

So overall, it's nice to have a book that is based on careful research and contains accurate information about the machine's operations and what it really achieved.

Marco Mattioli’s text gives a brief description of the aircraft’s development and a detailed but clear account of its operational history on all fronts it served. But due to the limited number of pages available, the text sometimes felt a bit too catalogue but there are some short quotes from  war diaries of squadriglie, wartime reports and recollections of crew members.

I was surprised that S.79’s active involvement as a bomber ended so early, from 1941, its use decreased significantly and became more marginal towards the end of 1942. It operated as a torpedo bomber still in late 1944 as Mattioli has told in his earlier book, which I have reviewed earlier.

A lot of interesting photos unfortunately many are rather small.

Hopefully Mattioli will also write a book on CANT Z.1007bis in the future.

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      Conway Maritime Press, 1985).
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      Frontline Books, 2011).
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      May 1941 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1954).
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      Stationery Office, 1954).
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Silverstone, Paul H., Directory of the World’s Capital Ships (Shepperton: Ian Allan Ltd., 1984).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_battleship_Jaime_I  Retrieved on 23 November 2019.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_I_(1921) Retrieved on 23 November 2019.
https://www.naval-history.net/xGM-Chrono-10DD-19D-HMS_Diamond.htm  Retrieved on 19 August 2019.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Diamond_(H22)  Retrieved on 19 August 2019.
http://www.naval-history.net/xGM-Chrono-06CL-Capetown.htm [July  6th  Carried out bombardment at
            Bardia in support of shore military operation] Retrieved on 19 August 2019.
https://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/40-06.htm  Retrieved on 19 August 2019.
http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/40-07.htm Retrieved on 19 August 2019.
https://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/40-11.htm Retrieved on 4 January 2020.
http://www.naval-history.net/xGM-Chrono-06CL-Caledon.htm [bombardment at Bardia not mentioned]
           Retrieved on 19 August 2019.
https://www.naval-history.net/xGM-Chrono-01BB-Malaya.htm  Retrieved on 19 August 2019.
https://www.naval-history.net/xGM-Chrono-04CV-HMS_Ark_Royal.htm  Retrieved on 29 December 2019.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Ark_Royal_(91) Retrieved on 29 December 2019.

 80 pages.

I found new material on Operation Totalize and so have made some fundamental corrections to the text from the chapter Break-out from Normandy and Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil onwards. They are written in bold letters. Special thanks to Michael Kenny, MarkN, John (histan) and Tom O'Brien (Tom from Cornwall) who gave very useful information, hints and links to much of this new material.

I am somewhat disappointed on this booklet. In principle a very interesting subject and the combat examples are IMHO well chosen: the British, including the armoured brigade of the 7th Armoured Division, attempt to capture Tilly-sur-Seulles on 10 and 11 June 1944, just before the famous ”right hook” made by the 7th Armoured Division which ended to the combat around and in Villers-Bocage on 13 June 1944 of which Michael Wittmann is famous in Anglo-American world followed by the withdrawal of the 7th Armoured Division back to more or less its starting line by the 15 June. And the bloody introduction of the 1st Polish Armoured Division into combat on 8 and 9 August 1944 during the Operation Totalize. The Polish ordeal began just after the British and Canadian armoured regiments had stopped an overconfident attack of a Tiger company led by Wittmann only a couple kilometres to the west during which Germans lost five Tigers including Wittmann’s. And just west of the Poles the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry, an armoured regiment (a size of an US or a German tank battalion) and the 1st Battalion Black Watch, an infantry unit, fought simultaneously a hard and to both sides costly fight against the Kampfgruppe Waldmüller. The “lowly” Panzer IVs of the II. Battalion/SS-Panzer Regiment 12 and the Jagdpanzer IVs of the 1. Company/SS-Panzerjäger Abteilung 12 were much more difficult opponents to the 1st Northants Yeo than Wittmann’s Tigers because of their skilful use of the terrain. And the Poles were badly blooded during their failed first attack partly because they were forced to use bad tactic ordered by their Corps commander Lt-Gen Simonds.
But the execution is somewhat botched, especially the Cromwell part has too many errors.

The product has the typical Duel structure, it begins with a useful chronology, then comes the design and development of the duellists with specifications and 3-view colour drawings of both. The engine given for Cromwell’s is a wrong version, more on that later. Then Technical specifications, which firstly gives gun/ammunition information. The ammunition drawings for Cromwell seems to give the US-made ammunition; the ammunition information is given in writing on the body of the shells, not by coloured ring(s) around the body or the nose of the projectile. The colours of the projectiles seems to be those used by British and Canadians, black for the AP shot (same in the US made) and buff body for the APHE and HE, the latter also  with light grey/metallic nose (US-made had olive drab body for the HE, also with light grey/metallic nose). But I readily admit that the ammunition colours are not my forte. Then armour and mobility. In the armour part interesting information on the British armour manufacturing and the quality of British armour plates and some information how Germans tried to circumvent the scarcity of important alloy ingredients. After that the combatants: training, unit organisations at battalion level, tactics and short biographical notes on one British, one Polish and two German officers. And then the combat part. At the end analysis, aftermath, bibliography and index.

Contrary to the caption on the page 9, still in 1939 British 2-pdr was exceptionally good anti-tank weapon, in fact it maybe was even too much optimized for good penetration power, so much so that British thought that it was not worth to produce an HE shells for it because of the very small HE component possible. It was only in 1942 than they began produce HE shells for the 2-pdr and at that time the main AFV using the 2-pdr was the Daimler Armoured Car. Only after the summer of 1940 Germans began catch up with the 2-pdr penetration ability and then, from October 40 with up-armouring their tanks marginalized 2-pdr, partly because in pre-war British had made a wrong guess. They had guessed that the Germans would use homogenous armour plates on their tanks, not face-hardened and so chose AP type armour-piercing ammunition, which was optimum against homogenous armour but not so effective against face hardened. It was only in 1943 when the UK began to produce 2-pdr APCBC shots, which were optimal against face-hardened armour. But in 1939 and during the first half of 1940 the 2-pdr had one of the best armour penetration abilities of the tank guns in use. Only Soviet 76.2 mm L-10 gun installed many but not in all T-28s and T-35s had equal penetration power and the German short 7.5 cm KwK 37 L/24 had almost equal. Of course those circa 3” shells had much greater after penetration effects and those guns were able to fire effective HE shells. And of course the penetration values are not so exact than they seems to be in neat tables because penetration mechanism is complicated and test systems varied.
Even during the early desert campaign maybe half of the Panzer IIIs of the DAK were the Ausf Gs with 30 mm max armour thickness and so vulnerable to 2-pdr fire at normal battle ranges.

The author briefly mentions the awful amount of resource wasted in the British tank production programs in 1941-43, British produced at that time thousands of tanks (Cavaliers and Centaurs plus only in a caption mentioned Covenanters) which the British Army saw unsuited for use as gun tanks overseas .

And then the bad mistakes. The engine of Cromwell is given as Rolls-Royce Meteor 4B or 4B/1 but to my understanding those were the engines of the main production versions of the post-war Centurion tanks and Cromwells were mostly powered by the 570 to 600 bhp Rolls-Royce Meteor Mk. Is but the last 800 produced by the 600 bhp Mk. IIIs.

Same with the Morris auxiliary motor, it was introduced in Centurion Mk. 3, Cromwell had one cylinder 4 stroke air-cooled auxiliary charging set, Tiny Tim, mounted behind the driver. Even the suspension description is mostly for that of Centurion beginning with the claim of six units when in Cromwell there were five road wheels on each side independently sprung and hydraulic shock absorber fitted to front, second, fourth and rear suspension units. At least the track information seems to be correct even if Bingham gives 125 and Higgins 126 links each side.

Armament part of Cromwell gives IMHO a slightly misleading description on the APCBC projectile, the soft steel blunt-nosed penetrating/armour-piercing cap is there to alleviate the impact stress to the hard and sharp nose of the projectile and to give a better “bite” on armour and over that a separate thin hollow sharp-nosed ballistic cap was fixed. And I have never heard that the British often removed the hollowed base section of the M61 shell. In fact they often, but not always, removed the high explosive and the fuse from bursting charge cavity, filled the cavity with inert filler and closed it with a steel plug with tracer. And according to Bird and Livingstone this change increased penetration capability of the projectile by about 4% not reduced it as Higgins claims. I tended to side Bird and Livingstone in this.

As Higgins mentions in one caption, British tank designs suffered from the fact that they were restricted by the British railway loading gauge. Other nations also designed their tanks to be capable to be transported by rail but in Great Britain there was and still is more restrictive loading gauge than in the Continental Europe. This was/is because the British railway network is the oldest and has been built by different private companies, each with different standards for the width and height of trains. This restriction limited the turret ring diameter and thus the size of the gun possible to be mounted. That was made worse by the British habit not to use sponsons/panniers above the tracks and some of the British gun and turret design criteria. During the war the British first tried to alleviate the problem by easing the railway clearance criteria. In the end it was decided to ignore the railway loading gauge restriction but due to the long development times, Centurion was the first British tank to fully benefit from it.

Contrary to Higgins claim British had not missed the need of better and better armour-piercing tank gun but had had development problems. The design for a tank armed with a 17-pdr gun, which had the same penetration power as the long 75 mm KwK 42 gun of Panther and better than Tiger I’s 88 mm KwK 36 gun, had started in the spring of 1942, and in December 1942 it was planned that about 25% of British produced medium tanks would be armed with the 17-pdr gun. 200 17-pdr armed A30 Challenger tanks were ordered in early 1943. The protracted development of the A30 and the delay in its introduction into service proved to be costly to some Cromwell equipped armoured reconnaissance regiments in Normandy e.g. to the 2nd Northamptonshire Yeomanry. Of course, even without A30 Challengers with better co-operation between armoured reconnaissance regiments and divisional anti-tank regiments (a bit larger than the US Tank Destroyer battalions or the German Panzerjäger Abteilungen) would have greatly helped in combats between armoured reconnaissance regiments and Tigers or Panthers. And the plans to arm some Cromwell series tanks with the Vickers 75mm L/50 High Velocity Gun shows that the Brits knew the need for a more powerful gun than the medium velocity 75 mm guns used on their tanks and Shermans. Unfortunately they found in late May 1943 that contrary to predictions the gun would not fit into the turret of Cromwell. In any case, it would probably not have had an impact at least in the early stages of the Battle of Normandy, since at the 25 May 1943 meeting, the start of the production of the cannon was delayed for the second half of 1944. Whether this was because of a development problem or a fall in priority because it became clear that the gun did not fit into Cromwell's turret, I don't know. The cannon, or more specifically, its more powerful development, the 77 mm HV cannon, was to become the main armament of the Cromwell’s successor, A34 Comet, and the new production schedule was in line with the planned A34 Comet production timetable.

Jagdpanzer IV part; Contrary to popular belief seemingly held also by Higgins, Tiger I development was not started as a hasty response to the surprise encounters of the Soviet T-34 and KV tanks following the German invasion into the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. It was initiated by Hitler's demand for heavy tanks that would be well armoured and armed with a powerful cannon, preferably a 88 mm calibre, nearly a month earlier. The reason behind this demand was the impression made by the French Char 2B and British Matilda II tanks. But the appearance of the T-34 and KV tanks increased the urgency of the task. Also, “…including upgrading the heavy, pre-war Tiger I design…” IMHO is better to say ”…including upgrading the pre-war D.W. and VK 30.01 (H) medium tank designs through the early-war VK 36.01 (H) heavy tank design to the Tiger I tank.”

IMHO the claim that the 7,5cm PaK 39 L/43 gun’s “barrel’s progressive rifling produced a similar effect to the added power generated by smaller guns that tapered at the bore.“ is an overstatement, the tapering gives a significant improvement in penetration power by significantly increasing the muzzle velocity, e.g. sPzB 41, 4,2-cm-lePak 41 and the British Littlejohn adapter. It was not confined to smaller guns, it was also used in the 7,5-cm-PaK 41. And while true that 7,5cm PaK 39 L/43 barrel had progressive rifling its effect to the muzzle velocity seems to have been slight, nowhere near the about 50% improvement achieved by 2-pdr Littlejohn adapter. Other than this small error IMHO the Jagdpanzer IV part is good, the ammunition part mostly gives very exact information on the ammunition Jagdpanzer IV used and the colour drawings of the ammunition used seems to be right. But I still have few main complains; other sources say that the HE round had a 0.745 - 0.755 kg propelling charge, not 2.2 kg the author claims. On gun traverse, the author only says that it was limited, but traverse figures are given in the specifications on the page 18, 12 degrees left, 15 degrees right, most other sources I have seen give 10 deg left and right, altogether 20 deg, but one of my friends, thanks a lot Arno, checked from his copy of Joachim Baschin, Martin Block, Jagdpanzer IV Part 1 - L/48 [Sd.Kfz. 162] Nuts and Bolts Volume 37 (2016) and it gives the same info as Higgins. So a point to Higgins. The amount of gun traverse is an important information because it shows how big tactical handicap the limited gun traverse was. The propellant weight for the Pzgr 39, the basic armour piercing ammunition, seems to have been 2.51 kg for KwK 40 since late 1943 but had been 2.43 kg still in August 1942 for the Kwk 40 and Sturm K 40. But the difference between this information and the information in the book is only 2 or 10 grams, so very insignificant.

The mobility part again gives wrong version of Meteor as the engine used in Cromwell, the given version was that used in Centurions from Mk. 3 onwards, in Cromwells they used Meteor Mk. 1s and 3s with maximum of 600 bhp power. In fact most of the Cromwell part describes the powerplant and running gear of Centurion Mk. 3 not that of Cromwell. The Jagdpanzer IV part seems to be ok, only difference I noticed was that Higgins says that its gearbox was ZF Aphon SSG 76 when Doyle et al (one of the other authors is Walter J. Spielberger) says it was Z.F. Aphon SSG 77. Ellis & Doyle gives the gearbox of Panzer IV Ausf D and Ausf G as ZF SSG 76 (ZF SSG 77), so both seems to be right.

As I wrote the part on British armour quality is interesting even if maybe a bit too critical. While a caption on the page 27 says “…British armour plate was essentially equivalent to U.S. armour plate in its resistance to penetration, but its quality was more variable…“ when Bird and Livingston writes “…British armor tended to be insignificantly higher resistance to penetration than U.S. armor, although quality was more variable…“. And “…British armour plate also tended to have a poor quality finish, with surfaces resembling corduroy that risked forming stress concentrations during impacts, reducing its ability to resist repeating shots” when Bird and Livingston writes “Surface finish of British armor was observed to be poor by German evaluators examining a captured Infantry Tank Mk. I. A Churchill III at the Aberdeen Proving grounds was found to have a turret side wall with a texture like corduroy. A rough surface can form stress concentration during shot impact, and result in a reduction of resistance to penetration.”[boldings mine]

On page 36, IMHO it would have been nice to mention also the Armoured Reconnaissance Regiment, a battalion-size unit, as part of a British armoured division, because the 10th Mounted Rifles Regiment was the Armoured Reconnaissance Regiment of the 1st Polish Armoured Division. Armoured reconnaissance regiment wasn’t a part of the division’s armoured brigade but directly under division’s control.

Training part is light on information, which is a pity because it had a very big influence on battles. On the  British side in practice readers learn only that basic training took six weeks and after that soldiers spent six months with 58th Training Regiment, Royal Armoured Corps plus some information on the training with the 7th Armoured Division and with the 1st Polish Armoured Division and how the tanks were allocated within the 4th County of London Yeomanry (4 CLY), one of the three armoured regiments (battalion-size units) of the 22 Armoured brigade of the 7th Armoured Division, and the 10th Mounted Rifles Regiment. It shows that the latter had changed its organization from that of an Armoured Reconnaissance Regiment (Type B) to that of an Armoured Regiment, but if right the Regiment HQ was three Cromwell short and the Reconnaissance Troop had one Cromwell, the normal TO&E was four Cromwells with the HQ and none with the Reconnaissance Troop. The change of organization happened also in the British armoured divisions in Normandy as a result of the lessons from the early fighting there. The German part gives little information on training of panzer forces in general with the German Army and the Waffen-SS. Instead it gives some information on the training given in Panzer Lehr and Hitler Jugend divisions including what was emphasized in training with these formations. It also gives information on which units were used to form the Panzer-Lehr-Division, the official TsO&E of the anti-tank battalions of a Panzer and a Panzergrenadier division and the actual situation with the Panzerjäger-Lehr-Abteilung 130 on 1 June 1944 and that of the SS-Panzerjäger-Abteilung 12 on 7 August 1944.

Colour drawings on the interiors of Cromwell’s turret and Jagdpanzer IV’s fighting compartment seems to be ok.  The latter shows that both side walls of the fighting compartment of a Jagdpanzer IV were stacked from the floor to the ceiling with 75 mm ammunition. My only complaint is that all the shells shown in latter are painted with grey, so indicating HE or smoke shells, surely an anti-tank vehicle carried also black AP shells.

Tactical part has some good points but again complains on the weak 6-pdr ammunition even if all Cromwells used in combat had the OQF 75 mm gun or the 95 mm close support gun. Even if Cromwell was more thinly armoured than Churchill its main gun was the same as that most of the Churchills’, namely OQF 75mm gun Mk. V or VA, many Churchills in the ETO still carried 6-pdr because it had better penetration power. Sherman's standard 75-mm cannon had virtually the same performance as the OQF 75mm gun. Both guns used the same effective HE shell, but their penetration power was mediocre. But tanks usually used more HE than AP ammunition, tank duels were not the main task of the tanks.

Short biographical notes given are on John Cloudsley-Thompson, 4 CLY; Jan Maciejowski, 10th Mounted Rifle Regiment; Joachim Barth, 1./Pz.Jg.Abt. 13 and Pz.Jäger-Lehr-Abt. 130 and Georg Hurdelbrink, SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 1 and 1./SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12. All shorter than usual in this series, less than a half page each. What a little I found easily on Cloudsley-Thompson, Jan Maciejowski and Joachim Barth is consistent with the info given in the book. And the information on Georg Hurdelbrink is in line with that in Számvéber’s book. Only error is the claim that Cloudsley-Thompson served as Crusader Mk VI commander in June 1942. Should be Cruiser Mk VI, A15, Crusader Mk I but the British tank nomenclature is overly complicated.

The strategic situation chapter; fairly good on 10 June 1944, mostly seen from the German side. A few complains, even if also Fortin mentioned that “Germans used to install sharpshooters along the front line, concealed in high places (trees, houses, church towers)…” I wonder were all German snipers, or ordinary riflemen called as snipers in Allies' reports, “often strapped to high tree branches” as Higgins writes. It sounds a bit a wartime myth. During the Winter War November 30, 1939 to March 13, 1940 between the Soviet Union and Finland Soviet troops believed that many Finns strapped themselves high up to trees and opened fire on the Soviet troops passing by. It was a myth but widely believed amongst the Soviet troops and often mentioned as a truth in Soviet literature. I’m not saying that Germans never strapped to high tree branches but that was not a good position for sniping, except a good field of fire it is the exact contrary of requirements for a good firing position and e.g. hugging tightly a tree trunk would have been a better position for sniping. And helmets were not rifle bullet proof at normal combat ranges, so maybe Higgins put too much weight on the fact that British tank commanders usually used berets not helmets. Helmets were mainly designed to protect against shell fragments not rifle bullets. Also it was not only because of the activity of Allied fighter-bombers and conflicting Axis orders as the author writes that Rommel failed in his effort to eliminate I Corps during the first two days of the invasion. The main units which stopped the counterattack by the Panzer Regiment 22 of the 21st panzer division on 6 June were the 41 Battery, 20 Anti-tank Regiment RA, which was equipped with M10s armed with 3" cannon, the Staffordshire Yeomanry, especially its Sherman Fireflies and some 6-pdr guns of the 2 KSLI. The effectiveness of British anti-tank fire seems to have been a shocking surprise to German tankmen but after all after the Battle of Medenine in March 1943 it had been clear that Panzer IVs had little chance of success if they attacked against a British anti-tank screen across open terrain without effective artillery support.

7 August 1944 situation description is good, also giving e.g. the positions of the companies of the SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12 on the eve of the Operation Totalize.

As said, the Combat chapter has problems even if the actions are well chosen.

The June 10-11 part, Operation Perch.

Firstly in fact the main troop carrying vehicle with the motor battalions of the British armoured brigades was armoured half-track not carrier. But of course also the US-made M5s and M9s half-tracks used by British were much weaker armoured than medium tanks and were like Universal Carrier open-topped.

As a general note, Higgins as so many writers note that bocage country was very different from desert but IMHO it is strange that the 7th Armoured Division seems to have learnt next to nothing from its Italian experience even though it had fought there about 1½ months during the autumn of 1943. And the terrain between Salerno and Garigliano River wasn’t and isn't exactly like desert and the tankers had found it difficult to clear the villages and the thickly wooded country with low, wet ground including belts of olive groves, vineyards etc.

The first tactical map, on page 55, is good for the 10 June fighting, showing almost all the villages and the streams mentioned in the text so supporting the text well. Only notable error is that 56th Brigade was, as it stands in the text, an independent formation, not part of the 50th Division as shown in the map. But the text gives an impression that the tank losses with the 22 Armoured Brigade would have been clearly heavier on 10 June than the six tanks given in Napier's book. The losses Napier gives for the 4 CLY are the same as given in the Regiment’s War Diary (3 Cromwell IVs and 1 Stuart V knocked out, two of the Cromwells were friendly fire cases, hit by tanks of the 8th Armoured Brigade). Of course tank losses are not so simple to establish, a knocked out tank might well be repairable if the battlefield remained in own hands. In the British system tank battle casualties and breakdowns within last 24 hours which were not repairable within 24 hours by squadron fitters with the help of the Light Aid Detachment of its parent armoured regiment (a unit of the size of a German or an US tank battalion) and with the possible extra help by the Brigade Workshop, if the resources of the latter allowed that, were stricken from the unit’s books at last light and handed over to workshops and the crews got new or repaired tanks instead.

But for the 11 June fighting the map is rather useless, the only place mentioned in the text, ’Ferme Cheval Rouge’, is not shown nor is the only subunit mentioned, the 3./Pz.Jäger-Lehr-Abt.  130, the clues are that the day’s action is named as the fight for Tilly-sur-Seulles and the mention that the British attack moved on Tilly-sur-Seulles. The 2 Gloucesters attacked there with the support of the C Squadron of the 4 CLY and got into the northern outskirt of it but could not take the whole town. While trying to outflank the town to west the C Squadron lost one troop (3 Cromwells and one Firefly) ambushed between Marcel and Tilly by panzergrenadiers. After that the C Squadron and Recce withdrew to battle positions north side of the Ruisseau du Pont Saint-Espirit Creek (British Military 1:50,000 map Sheet 7 F/1 Caen coordinate 830695) to support Gloucesters who were being counter-attacked and withdrawing from the town. On the other hand the 5 RTR, which operated north of Lingèvres, 3-4 km west of Tilly lost, according to Napier, one M5 Honey to a SP gun and one Firefly and two Cromwells to Panthers after which it withdrew. So even if the text strongly indicates that the attack described is that of the 2 Gloucesters supported by the C Squadron of the 4 CLY it was an attack supported only by max. 19 Cromwells plus some light Stuart tanks. Air support either was not very strong because of the weather was marginal.

Sight information and drawings are as always interesting because it is not easy to find information on them. But the complain that there wasn’t no range settings for APDS and APCR ammunition in the Cromwell’s sight is unnecessary because for the 75 mm gun they were not in rather short supply, they were non-existent.

There is a slip in the caption on the page 68, the armoured brigade of the 1st Polish Armoured Division had three armoured regiments (a battalion size unit) equipped with Shermans, not two. Also in same caption Higgins noted that “…the Cromwell’s modest armour protection and main gun meant the vehicle was ill-suited for fighting in bocage country…” IMHO the bocage country was not especially unsuitable for Cromwell, it was poor terrain for all attacking AFVs. The OQF 75 mm gun was rather poor weapon for tank combat generally but it had a good HE round and in fact tanks usually used more HE than AP rounds in combats and more so in bocage were A/T guns and short-range infantry A/T weapons were most dangerous and the weak armour was relative, the turret was fairly well protected, clearly better than that of late Panzer IVs and turret sides and rear even better than those on 50% heavier Panther.

Break-out from Normandy and Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil

Higgins says there were only four Tigers with Wittmann, but Schneider says that out of the ten available Tigers, seven took part in the attack to the north towards Hill 122 along the Caen-Falaise highway. Agte says eight Tigers participated in the attack and provided the names of the other seven tank commanders involved in addition to Wittmann. Számvéber says five, I think he has forgotten two battalion headquarters Tigers that Wittmann had ordered to participate the attack, one of which he took as his command tank. Also all other Germans sources that I have seen agree with Schneider that the attack was made by seven Tigers. Higgins mentions that Kampfgruppe Waldmüller included also some Panthers but the tank component of the KG came from the II./SS-Pz.Rgt 12 which was a Panzer IV unit. According to Schneider the tanks participating the German counter-attack were Tigers and Panzer IVs. It is true that the war diary of the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry mentions also Panthers in its list of destroyed enemy AFVs but in the text of the 1946 published unit history only Tigers, Panzer IVs and S.P. Guns (at least most of them must have been Jagdpanzer IVs) are mentioned in the description of the combat. The sentence “During the ensuing combat Jagdpanzer IVs positioned around Hill 112 reportedly destroyed 16 to 18 of an estimated 22 M4 Shermans of C Squadron, 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry for a loss of five Tiger Is, four Panthers, six PzKmpfw IVs and five Jagdpanzer IVs.” is problematic. Firstly, the TO&E of a British tank squadron was 19 cruiser or infantry tanks. Secondly, Hill 112 situates SSW of the orchard were the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry was in position and the C Squadron had taken up positions in the eastern, south eastern and southern parts of the orchard but the A Squadron was placed in the southern and south western parts and so was the nearest to Hill 112 when at least most of the C Squadron was shielded by the orchard and hedges from view from Hill 112. The description of the action in the history of the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry fits in much better with the description of 1./SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12 attack in the recommendation of Hurdelbrink, the Commanding Officer of 1./SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12, for the Knight’s Cross given in Számvéber’s book. According to it the attack route of the 1./SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12 was more or less that shown in the map in Higgins’ booklet as the attack route of 2./SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12 which in fact did not participate the attack. Most of the victims of 1./SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12 seems to have been Polish Shermans. The A Squadron 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry suffered rather badly but most of its losses and the losses of the whole 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry, 20 destroyed and damaged Shermans for the whole regiment, seems according to the unit history to have been inflicted by Panzer IVs of Kampfgruppe Waldmüller in a savage, mostly short range combats, not by Jagdpanzer IVs. But it is possible that some of the Shermans the British allocated to Panzer IVs were in fact hit by Jagdpanzer IVs lurking farther away. According to Számvéber and especially the recommendation for Knight’s Cross to Hurdelbrink confirmed that 1./SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12 skirted Robertmesnil from the right and thrust into St-Aignan-de-Crasmesnil from the east knocking out six enemy tanks in so doing. These were probably tanks of the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry. As said British allocated fewer of their losses to Jagdpanzer IVs but even according to British they brewed up two Shermans of C Squadron when firing at them from a ridge some 1000 yards to the south of the Shermans, IMHO this would put the Jagdpanzer IVs about 2000 yards NE of Hill 112 on their way north-northeastwards using small woods and hedges to shield them from British observation and fire.  Then 1. Kompanie/SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12 engaged tanks 1.5 km east of St-Aignan-de-Crasmesnil. These were Polish tanks from the 2nd Armoured Regiment of which the company reported to have destroyed 18. As said this is much more in line with the British and Canadian reports than the Higgins’ version. The German losses Higgins gives are those claimed by the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry according to its war diary. According to it the unit claimed “five Tigers, four Panthers (VI-) six Mark IVs and five S.P.Guns.” But from the description of the battle in the unit history I counted five Tigers, seven Mark IVs, four identified only as tanks and four S.P. Guns, of which three during the night skirmish during the advance to Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil, of which more later, as destroyed plus two S.P. Guns as knocked out during the combat with KG Waldmüller. That adds up to the total of 20 tanks and S.P. Guns, the same figure given in the unit history as the day’s ‘catch’ if we leave out the two S.P. Guns claimed as ‘knocked out’. IMHO it is noteworthy that the unit history, written by officers participating the actions just after the war, does not mention anything on Panthers, but instead of them mentions four identified only as tanks. Germans lost five Tigers, probably not all to the 1 Northants Yeo. On Panthers, before looking Számvéber’s book, I was pretty sure that no Panthers were present during the combat with the 1 Northants Yeo because the II./SS-Pz.Rgt 12 was a Panzer IV unit. But he writes about Panthers subordinated to the II./SS-Pz.Rgt 12 participating the attack of the KG Waldmüller and additionally he clearly states that five Panthers arrived at the command post of the II./SS-Pz.Rgt 12 on 8 August, to my understanding meaning in the afternoon. Those were tanks repaired by the Workshop Company of the SS-Panzer Regiment 12 and I got an impression that these were only used to secure positions south of Hautmesnil, some 3½ km south of the southernmost position of the 1st Northants Yeo. One must remember that the situation for Germans and SS-Panzer Division 12 was extremely critical and the HQ and main parts of the I./SS-Panzer Regiment 12, the Panther battalion, were committed elsewhere, so the practical option was to attach these Panthers to the II./SS-Panzer Regiment 12 in this special case. But of course it is possible that some other Panthers were involved in the attack by the KG Waldmüller. But  Panther losses around Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil on 8 August seems unlikely, at least so many as four, because between late 7 and early 8 August the KG Wünsche lost nine Panthers while attacking on the British bridgehead at Grimbosq on the eastern bank of the Orne. These losses probably explain the changes in the numbers of the combat ready Panthers with the I./SS-Pz.Rgt 12 between 6th and 9th August when the five repaired Panthers mentioned above are also taken into account.

1./SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12 did not lose five Jagdpanzer IVs during its combat against the 1st Northants Yeo. The British unit claimed five S.P. Guns, but these probably included the three claimed by Lt. Jones’ No. 2 Troop of “A” Squadron during the advance to Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil. This is in line of its unit history which describes destruction of one and knocking out of two during the combat south of Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil. These latter were Jagdpanzer IVs, the destroyed one at least was inspected after the battle by 1 Northants Yeo men. What happens those claimed as knocked outs, I don’t know. Számvéber in the parts shown in the pre-view does not give exact number but used plural in vehicle losses and gives the personnel losses of 1./ SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12 for that day as 3 killed and 12 wounded. Because the Jagdpanzer IV had four crewmembers the loss of five Jagdpanzer IVs is theoretically possible, but I find more text in the pre-view when tried again and according to Számvéber, on page 242, the SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12 lost only 4 Jagdpanzer IVs as total losses during Operation Totalize so it was not possible that they lost five to 1 Northants Yeo on 8 August. The total personnel battle casualties of the Jagdpanzer IV companies (1st and 2nd) of the battalion during 8 to 14 August were nine dead, 17 wounded and four missing, that might seems surprisingly high for only four AFVs, each crewed by four men, total loss. But the crewmembers were not the only members of the companies. The Soll personnel strength of a Jagdpanzer Kompanie with 10 Jagdpanzer was 3+44+72, which makes the total of 119 men, so only appr. 1/3 of the manpower of a company were crewmen. The 15 cm Sturmpanzer IV Brummbärs of 1./Stu.Pz.Abt. 217 were attached to the II./SS-Pz.Rgt 12 or to the 89. Infanterie Division at that time, its attachments changed almost daily during early August. Where they were employed on 8 August, I don’t know but the number of combat ready Brummbärs dropped from 13 to 11 from 6 August to 9 August. At first I thought that it was possible that the losses happened during a skirmish between No. 2 Troop of A Squadron/1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry and a troop of German S.P. guns very early on 8th August during the Allies night attack which opened the Operation Totalize. It seems very probable that some Jagdpanzer IVs of 2./SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12 participated this skirmish. The company was in the area or near of it according to a map in Számvéber’s book. British talked of Bumblebees which is the English translation of Hummel but why would Hummels have been so far forward, about two miles/three kilometres behind the German frontline, and anyway the only formation that had Hummels in the sector of the I. SS Panzer Korps at that time was the 12. SS-Panzer Division which was, but the parts participating operations further west, in the area SE of Bretteville-sur-Laize. Both Brummbärs and Hummels were armed with a 150 mm howitzer but very different kind ones and both were built on the chassis or modified chassis of the Panzer IV. British identifications of AFVs of their opponents were often somewhat haphazard. On the other hand the effects of at least some of the hits on Shermans during this skirmish were clearly like those of armour piercing shells of 75 mm L/48 and not like those of hollow charge shells of a 150 mm howitzer. There were no StuG IVs in the area and there were no Nashorns in Normandy. So no other AFVs with Pz IV chassis than StuPz IV and JgPz IV have any reasonable reason to be north of St Aignan de Cramesnil at that time. However, on StuPz IVs, Lt Phelan, 4th Troop/3rd Squadron/Canadian Grenadier Guards destroyed two SP guns just west of Cintheaux during the afternoon of 8 August, those were most probably Sturmpanzer IVs, the 2 Canadian Armoured Brigade, a part of which Canadian Grenadier Guards was, informed II Canadian Corps at 2130 hours on 9 August that enemy equipment knocked out since commencement of Operation Totalize was known as two GRIZZLY BEARS (15 cm SP) and 1 7.5 cm SP mk V PANTHER (withdrew smoking), in other words two Sturmpanzer IVs and maybe a damaged Jagdpanzer IV, there was no Panther SP version with 75 mm gun, maybe the sloped armour of the Jagdpanzer IV confused Canadians. Lt. Phelan’s action was in daylight and his troop captured the crews and his regiments harboured 1½ kilometres north of the combat site the next four nights so probably the identification of the destroyed enemy AFVs was more accurate. No. 2 Troop of A Squadron of the 1st Northants Yeo lost all its three 75 mm Shermans in that skirmish, one brewed up, one burned and one was put out of action by a hit in the engine. Maybe the claim that the opponents had been Hummels came from the Light Aid Detachment or Brigade Workshop personnel which probably went to look the damaged tank later on or from a recovery team because according to the unit history the troop leader described their opponents as tanks. I also though the possibility of a friendly fire case. According to the unit history No. 2 Troop of A Squadron of 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry was in the right hand file of the British left hand column and the troop made a detour to the right to by-pass Flail tanks which had difficulties to negotiate a sunken road, and were hit first from left then ahead and from right. The 1 Northants reported no other combat with enemy AFVs during the night advance so probably the opponents of No. 2 Troop of “A” Squadron were not other vehicles of the unit. The tank unit of the right-forward British mobile column, the 144th Regiment, Royal Armoured Corps, was at first delayed by German resistance. According Fortin its losses, three tanks, were caused by German infantry using Panzerfausts but according to the net article that unit lost a number of Shermans and three Priests to enemy action during the move to the debus area point just north of Cramesnil in fire fights with German infantry equipped with anti-tank weapons. According to the article the column also bumped to some German German Panzers and during this tank skirmish both sides lost two tanks. But those incidents were too late or too far away for being participated by No. 2 Troop of A Squadron of the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry, its combat happened around 1.30am and 144th RAC crossed the railway line at earliest at 2.00am, probably somewhat later. Unfortunately the only information on 148th Regiment, Royal Armoured Corps I have on that night is a few sentences in Ludovic Fortin’s British Tanks in Normandy and according to it 148th RAC seems to have lost only one Sherman. It was part of the British right-rear column which objective was Garcelles-Secqueville. So with what kind of vehicles No. 2 Troop of A Squadron of the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry during the night 7/8 August I don’t know. Germans used in Normandy a vast array of SP guns, so there are plenty of possibilities if British misidentified the chassis of the S.P.s they claimed. And of course friendly fire case is still possible. Kangaroo losses among those carrying 1 BW according to Colonel Hopwood's description of the 1st Battalion the Black Watch contribution to Totalise “The only direct enemy opposition encountered between the Soliers - Hubert Folie road and the debussing area came from an enemy self propelled gun which followed the column a short distance and knocked out two Priests which were carrying “B” Company men. In addition, an odd spandau opened up from time to time causing no damage.” The 1 Northants unit history says that besides the three tanks three Armoured Infantry Carriers had been hit on the march. There were several rows of AVsRE and Shermans between No.2 Troop and Kangeroos carrying 1 BW, so it seems improbable that No.2 troop engaged them, but one cannot be sure.

Also the map of the Cramesnil - Saint Sylvain area is a problematic, 33rd Armoured Brigade, an independent formation, is marked as a brigade of the 51st (Highland) Infantry Division. Also while it shows correctly the running of the frontline at midnight 8/9 August it is somewhat confusing because it shows for the 1./SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12 only the areas it operated on 9 August, namely south and south-west of Saint Sylvain when for most other German units the movements shown are those of on 8 August and those shown as movements of 2./SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12 are in fact more or less the movements of 1./SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12 on 8 August. Also according to the text two Jagdpanzer IVs of the 1st Company advanced as far as to the northern edge of Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil when according to the map the most northern advance was that by the 2./SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12 which is shown reaching area circa ½ mile south-east of the village. The problem is that the 2./SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12 didn’t participate to this action. Even according to the text in the booklet it was the 1./SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12 which operated with the KG Waldmüller as it is in the all other sources I have seen. And Számvéber clearly confirm that the 1. Company is the right unit. But maybe the attack route shown as that of the 2./SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12 is not badly off the attack route used by the 1./SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12. Also the attack route of the I./SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 25 is drawn too far east. I am somewhat puzzled by the claim that two of the 1./SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12 Jagdpanzer IVs “advanced further through eastern Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil. At village’s northern edge, Hurdelbrink claimed to have knocked out a further five tanks, an armoured reconnaissance vehicle and two prime movers.” Számvéber’s book has almost identical text, “advanced further through village. At the northern perimeter of the village Hurdelbrink knocked out a further five tanks, an armoured reconnaissance vehicle and two prime movers. Presumably these were also elements of the Polish 1st Armoured Division.” The reason of my puzzlement is that the B Squadron of 1st Northants Yeo was stationed north of the village and most of it was watching due East. And neither in the war diary of the regiment, admittedly sparse worded, nor the history of the regiment, which uses 8 and half pages to describe the combat around the village on 8th August, mention anything on a German attack penetrating into the village or an action north of it. The history mentions on B Squadron that “Enemy shelling from high velocity guns was continuous and made life decidedly uncomfortable for rest of the day.” But no mention on tank losses with the B Squadron and the only mentioned kills by its crews were two Panzer IV kills made by one of its tanks sent to support the hard pressed A Squadron at the southwestern part of the 1st Northants Yeo’s position late on the battle. And the personnel losses amongst B Squadron crews mentioned in the unit history happened on late morning during mortar stonks. It seems that there were some possibilities for direct fire towards some potential B Sqn positions from east of Robertmesnil where the Polish reported German AFVs or from the ridge running NNE of it. Neither does the war diary of the 6th Canadian Anti-Tank Regiment, RCA, which seems to be very thorough, mention any attack into the village. "A" troop of its 33 Battery supported the 1 Black Watch which took St-Aignan-de-Crasmesnil early on August 8th. I have not seen the War Diary of the 1 Black Watch but have read the Colonel Hopwood's, the Officer Commanding it, description of the contribution of his unit to the Operation Totalize and it mentions nothing about German AFVs penetrating into the village. And an enemy held village was not the most optimal place for (a) Jagdpanzer(s). According to the recommendation for the Knight's Cross for Hurdelbrink 1./SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12 “…thrust into the village…from the east…” Then the two Jagdpanzer IVs “thrust on past the village, whereby Obersturmführer Hurdelbrink knocked out five more tanks at the northern edge of the village.”  Looking the British war time map and the aerial photos of the area taken in 1947 it seems that it might have been possible to advance some 800 m east of Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil using a couple small woods and hedges and also the crest of the ridge as a screen against observation from the positions held by the 1st Northants Yeo. The low height of JgPz IV made a stealth approach easier. According to the British map and the aerial photos the houses of Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil formed a bit like to the north opening U and the B Squadron position, at least in the morning, was north of the village and at the time of the action there were, according to the regimental history of the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry, Polish units at the northern outskirts of the village. But it is difficult to explain the earlier part of the recommendation which says that 1./SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12 had thrusted into Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil from the east because there are nothing in the war diary or regimental history of the 1st Northants Yeo on that and it seems that nor did the Scottish infantry battalion there, 1st Black Watch, notice anything of that kind. But it is not entirely impossible, because the main positions of the infantry of the 1st Black Watch were south of the village and late during the combat between the 1st Northants Yeo and the KG Waldmüller a half of the B Squadron/1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry was sent further south to support the A Squadron which had suffered heavy tank losses. And it was probably possible to advance to almost east of Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil out of view from the village or from the orchards south of it, especially for so low vehicle as Jagdpanzer IV. But after that there was a more open stretch but at that time the area was more or less a boundary between British and Poles and those were usually a weak spots in defence lines and I do not know exact positions of the Poles after their unsuccessful attack during the afternoon of 8 August, but it seems that they retreated so far to the north that at least the lower parts of the ravine between Saint-Aignan and Robertmesnil that runs northeast was out of their sight, so maybe not impossible. Hart in his Operation Totalize in the map on the page 69 has figured out a very similar route as I. It ends more or less to a point where a 1947 taken aerial photo shows a narrow line of trees and a hedge which shielded from a view from the southern part of the Saint-Aignan, but after which any further advance would have bring one to a fully open field. Other possibility would have been to turn north some 150 – 200 m earlier using the trees and hedges on the both sides of the country road/cart lane running SE from Saint-Aignan towards Saint-Sylvain as screen towards the southern part of the Saint-Aignan, then across the Saint-Aignan – Conteville road to the garden of the Chateau or to the small woods at the eastern end of it. But I am not that good in map reading that I can say for sure that my reasoning is correct. For that I should visit the place because Google’s car didn’t drive the small country road/cart lane or a bit longer the cart track running south from the SE corner of Saint-Aignan. Maybe the other Jagdpanzer IV fired at the remaining tanks of the B Squadron/1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry without hitting while Hurdelbrink sniped Polish vehicles. But clearly Jagdpanzer IVs took Shermans of the B Squadron under fire for quite a while even if it seems that they did not achieve effective hits.  

Polish suffered heavy tank losses on 8 August and their attack on that day was stopped by Germans very soon after they crossed the start line by Germans. There are different information around exactly how heavy their AFV losses were during Operation Totalize (7-11 August 1944) plus up to the noon of 12 August. I have seen two versions of the Operational Report, Commanding Officer, 1st Polish Armoured Division by major-general Maczek; the one published in the Canadian Military History in 2006 says the losses in armour (mostly from direct hits or set on fire): total number 66 plus 5 A/T guns SP and 1 25-pdr gun SP. I printed the other version from the net maybe 12 - 20 years ago, its text is otherwise identical but the number of tanks lost is given as 88. There are several typos in both versions, e.g. sometimes the 10th Mounted Rifles is typed as 10 Mountain Rifle. But Reynolds in his Steel Inferno page 303 writes that in his book Avec Mes Blindés, General Maczek admits to the loss of 66 Poles tanks, so 66 seems to be more likely to be the correct figure for the Polish tank losses from 7 August to the noon of 12 August. On the other hand according to Michael Kenny Brian Reid gives a total of 57 in his book No Holding back (on page 290) which is not sourced from Maczek’s report, of which 24 were 'Z' losses i.e. 'requiring extensive repair or replacement requiring evacuation' in other words extensively damaged or total losses, which one was decided by higher echelon workshop personnel. That is more or less same as German 'long term repair’ and ‘total loss’ categories combined. But I do not know what the exact Polish AFV losses were on 8 August. I do not have access to Polish documents. But E Squadron 25th Canadian Armoured Delivery Regiment, which according to Reid delivered replacement vehicles to 1st Polish Armoured Division throughout the Normandy campaign, delivered nothing to Poles on 8 August, a Sherman V to the 1st Polish Armoured Division on 9 August (it was a replacement for a Sherman that had fallen through a bridge on 8 August) and 16 Sherman Vs on 11 August and 2 Sherman Vs to Polish Forward Delivery Squadron on the same day. On 12 August 3 Sherman Vs, 1 Sherman Vc (i.e. a Firefly) and 1? (the figure is very difficult to read) Cromwell to 1st Polish Armoured Division. On 13 August it delivered to the division 3 Cromwell 4/5s and 1 Staghound. On 14 August 1 Ram SP 25 pdr. On 15 August to Polish Forward Delivery Squadron 2 Sherman Vs and 1 Sherman Vc. And so on. What Polish Forward Delivery Squadron had at the beginning of Operation Totalize, I do not know. But D Squadron, 25 Canadian Armoured Delivery Regiment, which was the forward delivery squadron of the 4th Canadian Armoured Brigade, the armoured brigade of the 4th Canadian Armoured Division seems to have had 29 to 40+ tanks at the beginning of the operation. It delivered 10 to 15 August 60 tanks and received 33 and at the evening of 15 August had one Sherman ready for delivery and one in workshop, so probably it had had 29 tanks at the beginning of the operation. Operation Totalize was 4th Canadian Armoured Brigade’s, as also Polish 1st Armoured Division’s, first battle. C Squadron, 25 Canadian Armoured Delivery Regiment was the forward delivery squadron of the 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade, an independent formation which had been in action since D-Day. It delivered between 1 and 10 August 15 tanks more than it was received (34 vs. 19), so it had had at least that number of tanks at the beginning of the month. Most of its deliveries were made before the operation in order to bring the strength of 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade as near as possible to its TO&E strength. During the Operation Totalize, 8 to 11 August, it delivered 12 Shermans and received three. So Polish Forward Delivery Squadron may have had 15 to 30 tanks with it at the beginning of the operation, probably closer to 30. On the other hand E Squadron 25th Cdn Armd Del Regt delivered according to its war diary during the operation almost all tanks directly to 1 Polish Armd Div and not to its delivery squadron, the latter was the normal procedure and which was followed with the Canadian armoured formations during the operation. Maybe Polish Forward Delivery Squadron was not fully operational yet.
The Polish tank casualty report sent to Canadians on the forenoon of 9 August 1944 gives the tank losses on 8 August as 2 Stuarts, 26 Shermans and 6 Cromwells. It was third report on the subject and again with different figures. These reported tanks were destroyed or knocked out or non-operational for any other reason and were not repairable in 24 hours. Of the six Cromwells at least three were knocked-out, repairable or not, by Germans according to a unit history of 10th Mounted Rifles Regiment.
On the other hand the Phantom patrol with HQ Polish Armoured Division, from “C” Squadron 18 Canadian Armoured Car Regiment (XII Manitoba Dragoons), reported that Poles had lost approximately 38 tanks on 8 August. Canadians had communication difficulties during Operation Totalize and Poles had even worse, partly because of language problems which were made worse when some of the bombers of the US 8th Air Force bombed short in the afternoon of 8 August. Amongst the casualties was the commander of their British liaison unit who was killed. This loss hampered Poles’ communication with 2nd Canadian Corps and the other Canadian units and formations. But 26 Shermans is the number which Reynolds gives as the number of tanks lost by the two leading squadrons of Polish 2nd Armoured Regiment on that day. He gives his source as Meyer, Hubert, The 12th SS. The History of the Hitler Youth Panzer Division p. 174. He continued saying that Meyer gives no justification for this figure and continued “However, it is known that the Regiment received 24 replacement tanks and crews the following day and his [Hubert Meyer’s] figure seems very reasonable.” But Reynolds gives no source to his information. So, the lost 26 Shermans were either losses of the both attacking Sherman regiments or the tank loss report lacked information on the losses of 24 Lancers and the all 26 Shermans were lost by the 2nd Armoured Regiment. Against the latter speaks the fact that according to MarkN 24 Lancers lost 2 Stuarts which are probably the two Stuarts mentioned in the loss report. Of course it is possible that also 2nd Armoured Regiment lost exactly the same number of Stuarts but maybe not so probable. On overall tank losses of 24 Lancers on 8 August MarkN writes that “I've found one reference to 24th Lancers losing 6 pantsers from a 1959 book and 14 from a 1958 book. The former seems to lean on information from an earlier 1947 book. I'm not sure we should take either as being authoritative.” Hart in his Operation Totalize 1944 writes that the first attack by Poles on 8 August left no fewer than 38, the same figure the Phantom patrol with HQ Polish Armoured Division gave as the Polish tank losses for 8 August, wrecked Polish tanks spewing smoke on the battlefield and around 1600hrs Poles made a second try and in the face of heavy German defensive fire managed by dusk to advance some 1,600m in the area south of Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil. Also the War Diary of the 22nd Dragoons RAC, whose Flail-tanks (mine sweeping version of Sherman tank) were there to support the Poles if needed, confirms that the Poles suffered heavy losses. Reynolds also accepted as not unreasonable Hubert Mayer’s statement that the 24 Lancers lost 14 tanks but his reason for that is very odd, namely that the battalion was halted by a shallow valley with a steep southern bank just south-east of St Aignan was almost certainly exposed to flanking fire from Wittmann’s Tigers advancing north from Cintheaux. Firstly there is no line of sight from the route Wittmann’s Tigers used to the valley and secondly, the Tigers began their attack over an hour before Poles crossed their start-line and the gunner, Ekins, of the Firefly of No. 3 Troops of A Squadron opened fire against Tigers 55 minutes before the beginning of the Polish attack. And survivors of the Wittmann’s formation did not report any combat with tanks some 2 km northeast of their attack route before they run into the ambush. The three surviving Tigers claimed later in the day 7 tanks but the problem is that according to Schneider this happened east of St Aignan, so against the Poles but Agte says that this happened against enemy attacking west of St Aignan, so against Canadians. Taking into account the tactical situation I think that Agte is probably right. This interpretation seems to be backed up also by Számvéber’s book.

According to the war diary of 2nd Canadian Corps Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster General the officer casualties of 1 Polish Armoured Division had been on 8 August
    1 Armd Regt 1 WIA
    2 Armd Regt 4 MIA 2 WIA
    24 Lancers    –
    10 Mtn Regt 2 WIA
On 9 August
     1 Armd Regt    –
     2 Armd Regt 1 earlier reported as MIA who returned OK, 1 earlier reported as MIA who
                 returned WIA, 1 KIA, 1 WIA
         24 Lancers 1 KIA, 3 WIA, 4 MIA      
                                                                 
So According to 2nd Canadian Corps Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster General War Diary Polish 24 Lancers Regiment suffered no officer losses on 8 August, the whole division had reported loss of 18 officers on that day including two wounded officers of the 10th Mounted Rifle Regiment, the Cromwell unit of the Division. But of the 18 officers two are missing from the list that gives the names and the units with which they served. A short history of the regiment in the net, http://www.polishwargraves.nl/info/24.pul.one.htm says on 8 August combat “The Regiment therefore fought a hard battle, losing a few tanks. Among the losses in personnel a high percentage were officers. OC 1st Squadron Capt. PIWONSKI Marian was killed by artillery fire…” According to 2nd Canadian Corps Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster General War Diary Piwonski was amongst those lost on 9 August, he was reported as MIA. Poles seems to have communications problems with the British and Canadians, so it is possible that information about some losses arrived late to 2nd Canadian Corps and thus an attempt to figure out a rough estimate of the tank losses based on known officer losses, a highly inaccurate method in itself, is even more inadequate in this case. But anyway it might be that the discrepancy between officer casualty reports reaching 2nd Canadian Corps and the information in the net history indicates that the tank losses of 24 Lancers or some of them were lacking from the tank loss report send to 2nd Canadian Corps by the Poles. So I cannot say anything definite on the Polish tank losses on 8 August.             


Anyway, it is seems that also the Panzer IVs of the KG Waldmüller fought against Poles. The SS-Panzer Regiment 12 claimed 40 Shermans, one Churchill and one Cromwell on 8 August, clear majority of the Shermans and possibly also the Cromwell probably by the tanks of KG Waldmüller and several of those claims against Shermans were probably against Poles, the rest were against British, against the 1st Northants Yeo. It seems to me that of the 29 tanks claimed by 1./SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12 on 8th August the first six were claimed against the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry which lost at least two brewed up Shermans to Jagdpanzer IVs and the rest were claimed against Poles but at least some of the Polish losses might have been victims of A/T guns. It is difficult to say exactly how many tanks the Jagdpanzer IVs destroyed or knocked out because the figure of Polish tank losses is unclear and Jagdpanzer IVs were not only claimant. The British losses are simpler. During the combats around St-Aignan-de-Cramesnil the 1st Northants Yeo lost 15 destroyed or damaged (plus 4 during the advance to St Aignan and one which was reported missing but which was in fact ended up with the 144th RAC at Cramesnil and stayed/was kept there for two days) tanks.  One must remember that also the Panzer IVs of the KG Waldmüller suffered heavy losses, Számvéber writes “The remnants of the 5. and 7. Kompanien succeeded in retreating…” and according to the unit history of the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry they destroyed at least one very successful Panzer IV with its crew, which had destroyed or damaged six Shermans according to British, so probably some successful crews could not report their claims. As noted earlier according to the 1st Northants Yeo they lost two brewed up Shermans to Jagdpanzer IVs. And at least a few of those three Shermans of No. 2 Troop of A Squadron lost during the skirmish with “”Bumblebees” might in reality be lost to Jagdpanzer IVs of 2./SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12. In addition one Sherman was knocked out by an A/T gun, probably the one of the Divisionsbegleitkompanie of 12. SS-Panzerdivision. The gun was destroyed almost immediately afterwards by tank fire. Tank losses of Poles on 8 August are more problematic beginning with the fact that it is difficult to decide their exact AFV losses as shown above and how many of them were knocked out by the Jagdpanzer IVs of 1./SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12, how many by the Divisionsbegleitkompanie of the 12. SS-Panzerdivision and how many by the units under control of the 272. Infanterie Division? Yes, the right neighbour of the 89. Infanterie Division, 272. Infanterie Division, is also a part of equation. It was fairly well armed with A/T weapons but had failed to keep the forest west of Chichéboville in spite of making a counter-attack. It then formed a new defensive line from Chichéboville to Contevilleen. According to the manuscript written by the GOC of the division to the US Army after the war the allied tanks which attacked against this new deep left flank of the division were repulsed in front of Contevillen and Poussy-la-Campagnen and the enemy attack from La Hogue was repelled by fire. According to the manuscript 26 enemy tanks were knocked out [abgeschossen] in the sector of the division. Those tanks attacking the left flank of the division must have been Polish. And again the figure of 26. That units of 272. Infanterie Division fired at Polish tanks is in line with what the chief of staff of the Polish 10th Armoured Cavalry Brigade, the armoured brigade of the Polish 1st Armoured Division, wrote, namely that 2nd Armoured Regiment was routing east of the woods at 108556 (woods some two km SE of St Aignan de Cramesnil) and came under fire from the direction of Conteville and Poussy as well as the 108556 strongpoint but the GOC of the division mentions nothing exact only writing that ”There was a constant threat to the left [eastern] flank, which will be henceforth a menace to the div ops and my permanent worry.” Poles also took prisoners from 272. Infanterie Division and claimed to have destroyed i.a. two 88 mm guns, which if true were might well be from this division. Other candidates are schwere Panzerjäger-Abtailung (mot.) 1039 (elements of which were attached to I. SS-Pz-Korps, the Corps to which both 12. SS-Pz.-Division and 89. Infanterie Division belonged), a Flakkampftrupp (I do not know were there any around in the area at that time but they had two 88 mm guns and a few 20 mm AA guns each) or 89. Infanterie Division. But anyway it is very likely that the Jagdpanzer IVs was an effective tank killers during the fighting on 8 August. To my understanding it was the Jagdpanzer IVs east and northest of Robertmesnil which were the main reason to the failure of the attack of 1 Polish Armoured Division with help from the units of 272. Infanterie Division operating around Conteville and Poussy and probably also from some Pz IVs from KG Waldmüller.

Actions of 1./SS-Pz.Jg.Abt. 12 during the early morning of 9 August

Contrary what Higgins writes according to Maczek’s, the General Officer Commanding 1st Polish Armoured Division, operational report, the division didn’t execute the ordered night attack but resumed its attack on next morning.

According to Maczek's Operational Report, a unit history of the 10th Mounted Rifles and various Canadian War Diaries, the Poles and especially the 10th Mounted Rifles (the Cromwell unit) did not operate around Point 111 in the early morning of 9 August, so they could not be targets of Rudolf Roy’s gunner SS-Rottenführer Eckstein. It is highly probable that the opponent was Worthington Force, especially because of the war diaries of the units of Worthington Force, the 28th Canadian Armoured Regiment (British Columbia Regiment) and 1st Battalion Algonquin Regiment, mentioned nothing on other Allies/unknown/German tanks arriving at Point 111, which was 400 metres north of their position, during the morning and being knocked out there. Lieutenant-Colonel Worthington reported at 0650 hours on 9 August to his brigade HQ that the main body of his force had arrived at Point 195, their objective, in reality the force was very near Point 111, and that they had destroyed few lorries. This suits perfectly with the German reports that enemy tanks had occupied Point 111 from where they dominated all supply routes of KG Waldmüller. And according to the 2nd Canadian Corps Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster General war diary 10th Mounted Rifle Regiment suffered no officer casualties on August 9, that speaks strongly against significant Cromwell losses on that day. On August 8 it had lost two badly wounded officers. According to the War Diary of the 28th Canadian Armoured Regiment the rear/reserve component of Worthington Force, "A" Squadron of the 28th Canadian Armoured Regiment (28th CAR) and "D" Company of the Algonquin Regiment, was still by daybreak SSW of Soignolles WNW of Point 111. Most of the tanks of "A" Squadron were lost when they tried to reach the position held by the main force, namely a large rectangular field surrounded by a bocage tree-hedges some 350 m south of Point 111. According to the war diary the main part of Worthington Force sighted the first Tiger at 0800 hours, sometimes after that two tanks from “A” Squadron, the only ones from the squadron to reach the main position of the force, arrived. They brought the information that enemy armour and A/T-guns had completely cut off Force’s approaches, and that no further reinforcements from the original battle group could reach their position. According to Canadians at least some of the other tanks of the “A” Squadron were knocked out by Tigers (but this can mean also Panthers or Panzer IVs, British and Canadians were not very good to in identifying their opponents but IMHO probably tanks anyway) but others were potentially victims of Eckstein but the problem is that they seems to have been destroyed a little over kilometre west/WNW from Point 111 when according to a map sketch and the recommendations of Rudolf Roy and Fritz Eckstein for the Knight’s Cross reproduced in Számvéber’s book put the Eckstein’s victims at Point 111. And aerial photos taken in 1944 and 1947 show that shrub and tree rows sheltered the tanks of the “A” Squadron well from fire from north where the Jagdpanzer IV was according to the sketch map in Számvéber’s book on the page 169, if the map coordinates given in the war diary of the 28th CAR are correct. At least the following Canadian battlegroups were better on the map than the badly disoriented vanguard and “A” Squadron could locate its position in daylight. Of course, full certainty would only come from images taken from ground level in 1944, but it seems that Eckstein would have had, at best, only a few very narrow sectors through which he could see those “A” Squadron tanks that advanced towards the Worthington Force main position before they approached the crest of the SW-NE running ridge which included i.a. Points 111, 132 and 140. Before that, the approaching tanks of “A” Squadron were clearly easier targets for tanks of KG Wünsche operating on the ridge west of the position of Worthington Force. The five surviving tanks of “A” Squadron plus three tanks of “B” Squadron with them were pinned down SSW of Soignolles by enemy and eventually knocked out. Before that one AA tank was loaded with ammunition to resupply them but it was hit just before reaching them. British and Commonwealth AA tanks at that time were Crusader III, AA Mk IIIs with some Mk IIs which were almost identical and if it lost its turret it had a reasonable resemblance to Cromwell.

So while at first I thought that Eckstein's victims had been “A” Squadron tanks because they were closest to his Jagdpanzer at the sunrise now I think that at least the two Shermans of No. 2 Troop of “A” Squadron which did not made it to the main force position and the four Shermans of the troop Worthington sent to north to suppress A/T fire from that direction, the nearest two were knocked out less than 250 meters west of Point 111 on the same ridge. So those two Shermans were knocked out some 1.4 km from the position of Roy’s Jagdpanzer given in the sketch, while that was too far away from frontal penetration by a 7.5 cm Pak 39 L/48 with Pzgr Patr 39 (A German table says that 7.5 cm Pak 39 L/48 with Pzgr Patr 39 penetrates the frontal armour of Sherman I (M4) & V (M4A4) from appr. 800 meters. Post-war Yugoslav tests showed that 7.5 cm Pak 40 with Pzgr Patr 39 penetrates the glacis of a M4A3E4 Sherman, a bit thicker but less sloped than that of the Sherman sub-types mentioned above, from 1100 metres and the turret front from 1000 m. Penetration is not exact science and the specifications what is penetration varied and German tables tended to be on conservative side to make sure that German gunners did not open fire too far away for very probable penetration. The two nearest Shermans shown on the blow-up photo No.1 on the page 17 in Bechthold’s article had turned so that they were more or less aligned west-east direction behind a hedge and so showed their substantially less well armoured sides towards Roy’s Jagdpanzer and so were vulnerable to its fire. Even the 38 mm thick hull side of the third tank showing on the photo about 100 m south of the first two Shermans and its nose directly towards north might well be vulnerable to fairly acute angle hit from Roy’s Jagdpanzer. Of course at least some of these Shermans may well have be knocked out by other German AFVs or guns. The nearest point of the main position of Worthington Force was under 350 meters SSW from Point 111 and so 280 to 400 metres farther away [minimum 1.6 km away] from Roy’s/Eckstein's JgPz IV and behind a hedge/tree-line. But on the other hand according to the war diary of the 1 Algonquin Regiment, the infantry component of the force at appr. 0800 o’clock the main position of Worthington Force “came under terrific 88mm fire from North and North-east. Several tanks were hit and burst into flames.”  I don’t know what guns Germans had le Bû sur Rouvres area (NE of the Worthington Force position) but the fire from north was probably 75 mm fire from Roy’s Jagdpanzer which was appr. NNE of the Canadian position. So Eckstein may well have hit some of the tanks there.

9 August afternoon/evening Polish actions

Most of 1st Armoured Regiment (1. Pułk Pancerny) was attacking towards Point 140 south of Soignolles, about two kilometres SW of Point 111 and some 1.3 kilometres SW of the position of Worthington Force in the afternoon/evening of 9 August 1944. They took heavy casualties. This was a Sherman not Cromwell unit. Most of 10th Mounted Rifles was fighting in St. Sylvain three kilometres N of Soignolles but some parts of it were reconnoitring around Soignolles and SE of it.

Analysis chapter
on Cromwell generally balanced but again on p. 72 complaint against Cromwell’s 6-pdr  cannon and its weak HE round seems odd because as said Cromwells used in the ETO were armed either with 75 mm gun or 95 mm howitzer both of which had effective HE round. And besides some think that because of the delayed service entry of the 17-pdr armed A30 Challenger it would has been a good idea to do, at least in the armoured reconnaissance regiments, which did not have Fireflies, the same as was done in many Churchill equipped tank regiments, namely keep one tank per a troop be armed with a 6-pdr because it had somewhat better armour piercing ability with the standard armour piercing ammunition than the 75 mm gun and had a limited amount of Sabot/APDS ammunition available. Those somewhat erratic shots had significantly better penetration power than the normal armour piercing shots/shells. The other, minor complain is that I see Comet more as the successor of Cromwell than a contemporary.

One negative point of Cromwell is not mentioned by the author. It was designed as a battle tank not as a reconnaissance vehicle and while Cromwell was fast, manoeuvrable and fairly low it was not an ideal reconnaissance tank, Meteor engine being noisy as were the all-metal tracks. And especially British emphasized stealth in reconnaissance work.

On Jagdpanzer IV; the muzzle-breaks, not only crews were removing them, others were seeking them because they were short of supply during Normandy fighting and at that stage were seen as a standard part of the AFV.

Falaise pocket, Besides the actions of the 12. SS Panzer Division also the attacks by the 2nd and 9th SS Panzer Divisions against Poles from outside the pocket were instrumental for keeping the narrow corridor open to many German troops to escape from the pocket.

Photos are IMHO well-chosen even if several are well known, also most of the captions are informative. E.g. the photo of Challenger is good, taken from a bit higher it shows also the placements of the turret hatches. Caption giving a fairly good summary of that AFV. I have only a couple complains to the caption, the size of the turret was partly because the War Office demanded two loaders, so it was designed as a four men turret and the height of the turret was partly because of the requirement to provided 10° of gun depression also over the engine deck. And not the whole upper hull extend over the tracks, only the fighting compartment section around the turret ring. The 3-view colour drawings seem to be ok.

While I don’t usually like Osprey’s double page colour drawings seeing them as waste of the limited space available, IMHO in this booklets the drawing, in showing how difficult terrain the Normandy landscape was for an attacker, is useful.

Specifications given are quite thorough, more specific than usually in this series. Those of Jagdpanzer IV are also mostly accurate, also those of Cromwell but there is the bad mistake in its motive power section.

Bibliography is good.

OK, this became too long and partly off-topic, I was somewhat carried away by the combats around Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil and spent much time trying to figure out what had happened there. But that is one of blogger’s privileges. Booklet clearly shows that Jagdpanzer IV was an effective anti-tank vehicle. Its 75 mm L/48 gun was effective enough against Western Allies tanks, maybe heavy Churchills, Mks VII and VIII were exceptions, but there were not many of those around in Normandy. Cromwell on the other hand was let down by its gun in tank-vs-tank combat, it was not even match with Panzer IVH with its 75 mm KwK 40 gun, saying nothing on Panther or Tiger I. On plus side the gun had a good HE shell and the tank worked well during the pursuit through France in August-September 1944, i.e. in a classical cruiser tank role.

New sources:
War Diary of the 2nd Canadian Corps - General Staff 1944-08-01 – 1944-08-31.
War Diary of the 2nd Canadian Corps - Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster General Branch
   1944-08-01 – 1944-08-31.
War Diary of A & Q Branch, HQ 4th Canadian Armoured Division  1944-08-01 – 1944-08-31.
War Diary of the HQ 4th Canadian Infantry Brigade 1944-08-01 – 1944-08-31.
War Diary of The Royal Regiment of Canada 1944-08-01 – 1944-08-31.
War Diary of 1 Bn. Algonquin Regt. C.A.(A). 1944-08-01 – 31.
War Diary of the 28th Canadian Armoured Regiment (British Columbia Regiment) 1944-08-01 –
   1944-08-31.
War Diary of E Squadron 25th Canadian Armoured Delivery Regiment CAC 1 July 1944 – 31 July 1944.
War Diary of E Squadron 25th Canadian Armoured Delivery Regiment CAC 1 August 1944 – 31 August
   1944.
War Diary of HQ 25th Canadian Armoured Delivery Regiment (Elgin R) CAC 1 Aug 44 – 31 Aug 44.
War Diary of F Squadron 25th Canadian Armoured Delivery Regiment 1 Aug 44 – 31 Aug 44.
War Diary of C Squadron, 25th Canadian Armoured Delivery Regiment (Elgin R) CAC 1 Aug 44 –
   31 Aug 44.
War Diary of D Squadron 25th Canadian Armoured Delivery Regiment (Elgin R) CAC 1 Aug 44 –
    31 Aug 44.

http://downloads.sturmpanzer.com/Documents/Publications/A129.pdf
http://downloads.sturmpanzer.com/Documents/Products/KStN_1149_01.02.1944.pdf
https://milart.blog/2014/08/28/the-priest-kangaroo-armoured-personnel-carrier-in-canadian-service-
    7-august-to-30-september-1944/

Maczek's order for the attack No 1 on 8 Aug 44 to the 1 Polish Armoured Division on 7 August 1944.    
Beale, Peter, Tank Tracks 9th Battalion Royal Tank Regiment at War 1940-45 (Stroud: Budding Books,
    1997, first published by Alan Sutton Publishing, Stroud 1995).
Bechthold, Mike, Lost in Normandy The Odyssey of Worthington Force, 9 August 1944. Available at:
     http://canadianmilitaryhistory.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Bechthold-Worthington-Force.pdf
Caravaggio, Angelo N, 'Commanding the Green Centre Line in Normandy: A Case Study of Division
     Command in the Second World War', Ph.D. Diss, Wilfrid Laurier University, 2009.
  https://scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.bing.com/&httpsredir=1&article=2074&context=etd
Gullachsen, Arthur "No Shortage of Tanks!: The Canadian Army’s System for the Recovery, Repair and
    Replacement of A and B Vehicles and Major Weapons Systems" Canadian Military History, Vol. 27,
    Issue 1.
Liedtke, Gregory, "Canadian Offensive Operations in Normandy Revisited" Canadian Military Journal Vol. 8, No. 2, Summer 2007. http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vo8/no2/liedtke-eng.asp
Neitzel, Hasso, FMS B-425 89th Infantry Division (8-15 Aug 1944) contains details of 89 Inf Div. The
    report was written by the division's Ia and is dated January 1947.
Perrun, Jody, "Best-Laid Plans: Guy Simonds and Operation Totalize, 7-10 August 1944" The Journal of
    Military History, Volume 67, Number 1, January 2003, pp. 137-173.
Reid, Brian A., No Holding Back. Operation Totalize, Normandy, August 1944 (Mechanicsburg, PA:
    Stackpole,2009). https://books.google.fi/books?id=Ou63DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA59&hl=fi&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false  Extracted on 15 January 2019.
Schack, Friedrich-August, MS B-702, "272nd Infantry Division (26 July – 12 September 1944" (Foreign
    Military Studies Division, 1947, 40 pages).
Spielberger, Walter J., Die Panzer-Kampfwagen 35(t) und 38(t) und ihre Abarten (Stuttgart: Motorbuch,
    1980).

https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=239491
https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=239668
https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=218554
http://www.polishwargraves.nl/info/24.pul.one.htm  Extracted on 15 Januarry 2019.
https://www.project44.ca/intelblog/2019/8/6/worthington-force-from-the-air Extracted on 8 November
    2019.
http://afvdb.50megs.com/usa/m4sherman.html#M4A4  Extracted on 12 June 2019.
https://www.quora.com/Could-WW2-anti-tank-guns-fire-HE-shells-like-normal-guns-could-or-were-they-less-effective-for-firing-this-type-of-shells  Extracted on 22 February 2019.
https://www.ioffer.com/img3/item/517/609/569/d8TQgerman-tank-75mm-kwk40-stug-ammo-manual-
    reference.jpg  Extracted on 11 September 2019.
https://aijaa.com/CzKg3E  Extracted on 11 September 2019.


Original sources:
Kriegstagebuch des Panzer-Armeeoberkommando 5 Ia I. Teil 10.6.1944 – 8.8.1944 T313 Roll 420
Kriegstagebuch des Panzer-Armeeoberkommando 5 Ia I. Teil 10.6.1944 – 8.8.1944 (Anlagen) T313 Roll 420
War Diary of the 4th County of London Yeomanry
War Diary of the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry
War Diary of the 6th Canadian Anti-Tank Regiment, RCA
      http://heritage.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.lac_reel_t16719/1375?r=1&s=3
War Diary of the 22nd Dragoons RAC  http://ww2talk.com/index.php?threads/looking-for-the-diaries-of-22nd-dragoons-rac-august-1944.73686/#post-791161

British wartime 1:50,000 map 7F/1 Caen
British wartime 1:50,000 map 7F/3 Aunay-Sur-Odon
British wartime 1:50,000 map 7F/4 St Pierre-Sur-Dives
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/maps/europe/zoomify138923.html
https://remonterletemps.ign.fr/comparer/basic?x=-0.283115&y=49.074275&z=15&layer1=GEOGRAPHICALGRIDSYSTEMS.MAPS.SCAN-EXPRESS.STANDARD&layer2=ORTHOIMAGERY.ORTHOPHOTOS.1950-1965&mode=normal
https://www.google.com/maps/@49.0642339,-0.2883265,3a,15y,29.42h,89.51t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sn-r8sVgLPAZXRVJr7zZcEA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

[Anon.] The 1st and 2nd Northamptonshire Yeomanry (Brunswick, 1946, Reprinted by The Naval & Military
    Press, Uckfield [no date]).
Agte, Patrick, Michael Wittmann and the Waffen SS Tiger Commanders of the Leibstandarte in World War II
    Volume Two (Mechanicsburg: Stackpole, 2006, first published by J. J. Fedorowicz, Winnipeg 1996).
Baxter, Brian S., Breakdown. A History of Recovery Vehicles in the British Army (London: Her Majesty’s
    Stationary Office, 1989).
Bingham, Major James, ‘Cromwell’ in Duncan Crow (ed.), Armoured Fighting Vehicles of the World . Volume 3
     . British and Commonwealth AFVs 1940-46 (Windsor: Profile Publication, 1971).
Bingham, Major James, ‘Comet’ in Duncan Crow (ed.), Armoured Fighting Vehicles of the World . Volume 3.
     British and Commonwealth AFVs 1940-46 (Windsor: Profile Publication, 1971).
Bird, Lorrin Rexford & Livingston, Robert D., World War II Ballistics: Armor and Gunnery Second Edition
    (Albany, NY.: Overmatch Press, 2001).
Chamberlain, Peter & Doyle, Hilary L., Encyclopedia of German Tanks of World War Two (London: Arms and
     Armour Press, revised edition, 1993).
Courage, Major G., The History of 15/19 The King's Royal Hussars 1939-1945 (Aldershot: Gale & Polden,
    1949).
Delaforce, Patrick, Churchill’s Desert Rats in North-West Europe. From Normandy to Berlin (Barnsley: Pen &
     Sword, 2010).
Doyle, Hilary Louis, Panzerjaeger IV (Sd Kfz 162 & 162/1) – 1942/45 Bellona Military Vehicle Prints Series 30
     (Hemel Hempstead: Model & Allied Publications, 1972).
Ellis, Chris & Doyle, Hilary, Panzerkampfwagen. German Combat Tanks 1933 – 1945 (Kings Langley: Bellona
     Publication, 1976).
Ellis, L. F., Victory in the West Volume I The Batlle of Normandy (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office,
    1962).
Evans, Charles et.al., The Rolls-Royce Meteor - Cromwell and Other Applications - Historical Series No 35 ( :
     Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust, 2004).
Fletcher, David, The Great Tank Scandal. British Armour in the Second World War Part 1 (London: HMSO,
    1989).
Fletcher, David, The Universal Tank. British Armour in the Second World War Part 2 (London: HMSO,
    1993).
Fletcher, David, Universal Carrier 1936—48 The ‘Bren Gun Carrier’ Story New Vanguard 110 (Oxford:
    Osprey, 2005).
Ford, Ken, Battle Zone Normandy Sword Beach (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2004).
Foreman, John, Over the Beaches, The Air War Over Normandy and Europe 1st-30th June 1944 (Walton-on-
    Thames: Air Research, 1994).
Fortin, Ludovic, British Tanks in Normandy (Paris: Histoire & Collections, Second Print, 2012).
Hart, Stephen A, Sherman Firefly vs Tiger. Normandy 1944 Duel 2 (Oxford: Osprey, 2007).
Hart, Stephen A, Operation Totalize 1944. The Allied drive south of Caen. Campaign 294 (Oxford: Osprey,
     2016).
Jentz, Tom et.al., Tiger I Heavy Tank 1942 — 1945 New Vanguard 5 (London: Osprey, 1993).
Kershaw, Robert J., D-Day piercing the Atlantic Wall (Shepperton: Ian Allan, 1993).
Knight, P. M., A30 Challenger Tank A Technical History (Black Prince, Second Edition, 2015).
Maczek, Stainslaw, "The 1st Polish Armoured Division in Normandy", Canadian Military History: Vol. 15
     (2006) Iss. 2 pp. 51-70.
Meyer, Hubert, The 12th SS. The History of the Hitler Youth Panzer Division: Volume Two (Mechanicsburg,
     PA: Stackpole, 2005, first published by J. J. Fedorowicz, Winnipeg 1994). Pre-view extracted on 25
     November 2018 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zyOzFMjUkyQC&pg=PP1&dq=12th+ss+volume+two&hl=fi#v=onepage&q&f=false
Munro, Bill, The Centurion Tank (Marlborough: Crowood, 2005).
Napier, Stephen, The Armoured Campaign In Normandy June – August 1944 (Stroud: Spellmount, 2015).
   https://www.amazon.co.uk/Armoured-Campaign-Normandy-June-August-ebook/dp/B00TNTA2AC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1545918474&sr=8-1&keywords=the+armoured+campaign+in+normandy%3A+june-august+1944#reader_B00TNTA2AC  Pre-view extracted on 9 August 2016. Showed more at that time.
Panzertruppen 2 The Complete Guide to the Creation & Combat Employment of Germany’s Tank Force.
     1943-1945, ed. by Jentz, Thomas L. (Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 1996).
Quarrie, Bruce, Encyclopaedia of the German Army in the 20th Century (Wellingborough: Patrick Stephens,
    1989).
Reynolds, Michael, Steel Inferno 1st SS Panzer Corps in Normandy (New York: Dell, 1998)
Schneider, Wolfgang, Tigers in Combat II (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole, 2005, first published by J. J.
     Fedorowicz, Winnipeg 1998).
Shores, Christopher & Thomas, Chris, 2nd Tactical Air Force Volume One Spartan to Normandy (Hersham:
    Classic 2004).
Spielberger, Walter J., Sturmgeschütz & Its Variants (Atglen, PA: Schiffer 1993).
Stacey, Colonel C. P., The Victory Campaign. The Operations in North-West Europe 1944-1945. Official
    History of the Canadian Army in The Second World War Volume III (Ottawa: The Queen’s Printer and
    Controller of Stationery, 1960).
Számvéber, Norbert, Waffen-SS Armour in Normandy (Solihull: Helion & Company 2012). Pre-view extracted
  on 1 August 2018 https://books.google.fi/books?id=7t7ZAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA259&lpg=PA259&dq=Fritz+Eckstein+ss&source=bl&ots=HP0evkK0pV&sig=yLTQuKLAOjk0bSFp2oEVeZIo2_o&hl=fi&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjNq4uT78zcAhWGCiwKHXRpC0kQ6AEwA3oECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q&f=true
Wood, M. & Dugdale, J., Armies in Focus. Orders of Battle. Waffen SS Panzer Units in Normandy 1944
     (Farnborough: Books International 2000).
Zaloga, Steven J., Panzer IV vs Sherman France 1944 Duel 70 (Oxford: Osprey, 2015).

http://www.wwiiequipment.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=73:2-pounder-anti-tank-gun&catid=40:anti-tank&Itemid=58
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loading_gauge
http://forum.worldoftanks.com/index.php?/topic/272514-british-75mm-hv-vs-77-mm/
http://quarryhs.co.uk/alt%20WW2%20tank%20gun.htm
http://www.tank-net.com/forums/?showtopic=35631
       Unfortunately I have not able to access to Tank-net Forums for a couple years because my anti-virus
       program (F-Secure) blocked access there.
TankNet Military Forums, 2003 - The Cromwell - how good?  Unfortunately I have not able to access to Tank-
       net Forums for a couple years because my anti-virus program (F-Secure) blocked access there.
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=221644
http://www.theobservationpost.com/blog/?p=132
http://www.ww2talk.com/index.php?threads/motor-battalion-and-machine-gun-units.23759/#post-290155
http://ww2talk.com/index.php?threads/transport.23817/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M5_Half-track
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-MTO-Salerno/USA-MTO-Salerno-10.html
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-MTO-Salerno/USA-MTO-Salerno-13.html
https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=147849&start=60
https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=147849&start=75
http://www.ww2talk.com/index.php?threads/august-7th-1944-operation-totalize.70696/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cloudsley-Thompson
http://www.polandinexile.com/polisharmy.html
http://www.tracesofwar.com/persons/1666/Barth-Joachim-Panzerj%E4ger-Abteilung-13.htm
https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=236935&p=2154627#p2154627
https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=97516&start=45
http://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Gliederungen/Infanteriedivisionen/89ID-R.htm  
https://www.dday-overlord.com/en/battle-of-normandy/forces/germany/89-infanterie-division
http://sturmpanzer.com/Default.aspx?tabindex=2&tabid=323&item=3&sec=3
Niklas Zetterling’s long ago defunct Normandy site, information on 12. SS-Panzer Division and 217. Sturm-    Pz.Abt extracted on 3.9.1999.
Jukka Juutinen confirmed some technical details.

Khazanov, Dmitriy & Medved, Aleksander, Bf 109E/F vs Yak-1/7 Eastern Front 1941 – 42 Osprey Duel 65 (2015) 80 pages, ISBN: 978 1 4728 0579 9

The book was a bit disappointment. It has its good points and generally while the situation is much improved since 1980s there is still lack of books on the Soviet side of the Great Patriotic War as they call the WWII on the Eastern Front from 22 June 1941 onwards. The book shows that while Yak-1 or Yak-7 were not in par with Bf 109F-4, IMHO the best short-range fighter in the world from mid-1941 to mid-1942, they were good, if somewhat rudimentary equipped low- and medium altitude fighters during that timeframe.

The book gives as usual in this series the basic information on the versions of Yaks and Bf 109 up to mid-1942, the strategic background and the pilot training, combat tactics and organization of the respective air forces. The biographs given are those of Mikhail Dmitrievich Baranov, an ace with 24 individual aerial victories and Hermann Graf, 206 aerial victories according the book, 212 aerial victories according to the most sources I have seen, e.g. Bergström et. al. Graf biography and http://www.luftwaffe.cz/graf.html . There is empty space worth of 15 lines on the page allocated to the Graf’s biography which could have been easily filled by more facts from Graf’s long combat career and e.g. his father’s occupation, he was a farmer, later a baker who served as an artilleryman during the WWI, not simply an artilleryman as given in the bio. And while JG(r) 50 was a specialist unit JG 11 wasn’t. The book illustrated some battle formations used by the VVS KA (the Soviet Army Air Force), they were standard “vic” based formations used rather universally before a pair and its multitudes became the new norm. The Combat part is somewhat vague but includes some interesting quotes from pilots’ memoirs.

On the pages 58 – 59 there is a good analyse on the problems faced by the Soviet fighter formation leaders during the early part of the Great Patriotic War; lack of radios, poor communications generally, too strict orders which limited formation leaders initiative, obsolete formations etc. But I doubt the claim that Soviet fighters were invariably being outnumbered even in the initial stages of the fighting on the Eastern Front, front was simply so long and there were too few German fighters to give adequate cover to everywhere along it.

The authors give as the total number of Bf 109s ranged against the Soviet Union as approximate 820, not much over the usually given figure of 793 single-engine fighters of which 619 were serviceable.

There are three maps on pages 36, 40 and 41. The first one gives information on the Luftwaffe and VVS KA (Army Air Forces) fighter strengths on the eve of the Operation Barbarossa on the very early morning of 22 June 1941 on the Eastern Front from the Gulf of Finland to the Black Sea. The number of VVS KA fighters, 4,226 is smaller than that given in Tomasz Kopanski’s Barbarossa Victims on page 13, namely 4 730. On the other hand, the number of Bf 109s readying to attack the Soviet Union is given as 824 which is a little more than 793 given in Balke’s and Bergström’s books. The number of Yak-1s given is identical in both this and Kopanski’s book. The second map shows the Soviet fighter units in the Moscow area on 30 October 1941. Based on my very limited sources of Soviet air forces it seems that some of the 6 IAK (fighter corps) Moscow Region PVO fighter units are left out, e.g. 16 and 34 IAPs equipped with MiG-3s. The map reveals the bases used and the fighter regiments and also shows which fighter regiments had Yak-1s in their strengths but doesn’t give any strength figures for the Soviet units shown. The last one gives the disposition of the VVS-KA fighter units in the Stalingrad region in October 1942, giving the number of Yaks and the identity of the IAPs (fighter regiments) for each IAD and SAD (fighter and mixed air divisions) in the region. Also given is the number of Bf 109s in the region (both Bf 109F-4s of the JG 3 and the Bf 109E-7/Us of the SchG 1). The number of  Bf 109 fighters is correct but according to the Michael Holm’s site (http://www.ww2.dk/air/jagd/jg3.htm etc.), most were in fact Bf 109G-2s, only III./JG 3 was still equipped with Bf 109F-4s. This is confirmed in the Prien’s & Stemmer’s Jagdgeschwader 3 “Udet” in World War II multivolume unit history. I./Sch.G.1 had exactly 28 Bf 109E-7/U-1s on 31.10.1942 plus Stab/Sch.G.1 had five more and on 1 October they have had 22+3 Bf 109E-7/U-1s according to Michael Holm’s site. So one can say that the number of Bf 109s given is the correct one but most of the fighters were in fact already Bf 109G-2s and F-4s were already a minority.

But the book has its problems. It is a bit misleading to compare the number of Bf 109s with the number of Yaks in service because in 1941 Bf 109 was the only single engine fighter in service with the Luftwaffe on the Eastern Front while Soviet air forces had, besides the huge number of older fighters, three types of modern single engine fighters in service. The most numerous of these in June 1941 was the MiGs, around 1,000 in service compared to 200+ Yak-1s. Those LaGG-3s which were with first–line units were with Moscow and Leningrad PVOs or in Far East. I don’t have exact number of LaGG-3s with first-line units, but the number of the modern single-engine fighters produced by 22 June 1941 was 2,030 (1,309 MiGs, 399 Yak-1s and 322 LaGG-3s). And even during the last six months of 1941 both MiG-3 and LaGG-3 productions were twice as high as the Yak production. Only in 1942 Yak became the most produced Soviet single engine fighter.

Bf 109E-3 was powered by a DB 601 A, not by a DB 601Aa.

On p. 22 there is a typo and a mistake in the last chapter, M-105P/PA produced 1,100 metric hp/ps/л.с. (1,085 hp) at 2,000 m alt. and 1,050 metric hp/ps/л.с. (1,036 hp) at 4000 metres. M-105PF produced 1,260 hp/ps/л.с. (1,243 hp) at 700 m, 1,180 hp/ps/л.с. (1,164 hp) at 2700 metres. So the full throttle/rated altitudes were lower than claimed in the book.

In Bf 109Fs its 7.92 mm MG 17s had 500 rpg, not 300 claimed in the book. Probably the error is because from Bf 109G-5/-6 onwards the two MG 17s with 500 rpg were replaced by two 13 mm MG 131s with 300 rpg.

The maximum speed of Bf 109F-4. The DB 601 E was initially restricted to 1,200 PS (1,184 hp) at 2,500 rpm; however, the full rating of 1,350 PS (1,332 hp) at 2,700 rpm (Start und Not that means Take-off and Emergency, allowed only for a short duration of 3 minutes) was cleared for service use by February 1942. With 1,184 hp Climb and Combat power maximum speed of a Bf 109F-4 was 660 km/h at 6,200 m according to the Datenblatt  109 F4 Augsburg, den 29.11.41. I don’t know if the speed is with or without compressibility correction, often German performance figures are given without compressibility correction. At that speed and altitude, the compressibility correction should IMHO reduce the attained speed about 15 km/h. In this case I think that the figure is without the compressibility correction because the maximum speed with 1,184 hp Climb and Combat power was given as 635 km/h at 6,000 m in the Datenblatt  109 F4 Augsburg, den 1.7.42. Anyway faster than 610 km/h given in the book and of course during 1942 even faster with Take-off and Emergency power, which gave extra 150 hp for maximum of 3 minutes. Also the ranges given to Bf 109 F-2 and F-4, 580 km and 560 km respectively, seems to be too short. A British test, dated 3rd Dec 1944, gave the maximum tactical range of Bf 109G (no information on subtype) with greater displacement DB 605 engine and the same amount of fuel as 615 mls/990 km without the 300 litres drop-tank and 1145 mls/1682 km with it. It also gives the fast cruise range of 450 mls/724 km without and 795 mls/1280 km with a drop-tank for the Bf 109G. Finnish experience was that the practical maximum range of Bf 109G-2/-6 was c. 750 km without a drop-tank because when flying lower, more economical speeds there were problems with spark plugs soothing and exhaust leakage into the cockpit. The Soviet data I have seen gives 650 km range for Bf 109F-4. Also the specification given in the table on the page to Yak-1b are the same but for the armament as given to normal high-back Yak-1 powered by a M-105PF tested at NII VVS in June 1942 in the Gordon’s book. According to Gordon Yak-1B was a bit lighter and 19 km/h faster than given in the table of this book. The information given on Yak-7B in the table and in Gordon’s book are almost identical.

On page 33 the ammunition load for the 20 mm MG 151/20 in Bf 109F-4 was given as 200 rounds. That is what could be loaded into a F-4 but at least Finns found out with their Bf 109Gs that the 200 rounds 20 mm belt was too heavy and often produced a breakage of the ammunition belt approximately halfway. When modifications didn’t eliminate the problem and Finns heard that Germans used to load their 109Gs only with approximately 130 rounds, Finns began to load the MG 151/20 of their 109Gs with 155 rounds (130 in the ammo box and 25 on the loading tray). Still more 20 mm rounds than in a Yak.
 
DB 605A engine didn’t immediately bring more power to Bf 109 because the use of the 1.42 ata boost which was needed for the 1,475 PS (1,455 hp) take-off and emergency power was banned most of the time up to autumn 1943, before that but some intervals maximum allowed boost was 1,30 ata producing maximum take-off power of 1,310 PS (1,292 hp). So at low and mid altitudes most of time before autumn 1943 Bf 109G had less power that Bf 109F-4 with heavier engine, only above circa 5,250 m DB 605A produced more power at 1.30 ata than DB 601E at 1.42 ata because the former had higher full throttle height but that was more important against the Western Allies than on the Eastern Front.

The book gives a bit too good picture on the pilot training in the Luftwaffe. Even if the Luftwaffe fighter pilots got some training on instrument flying, that wasn’t good enough for bad weather operations as the Luftwaffe learned in the West during the winter 1943/44.

On the page 43 the figure given as the Luftwaffe total losses between 1 May and 31 August 1942, 4,460 aircraft, is IMHO odd, the Quartermaster Generals Loss Returns gives the total losses of that time period as a little under 3,000 and that is the figure for all fronts plus a little under 2,400 damaged. According to Williamson Murray’s Luftwaffe p. 107 Table XXV, 53,7 % of the Luftwaffe total losses between 1 June and 31 August happened on the Eastern Front.  So the figure in the book doesn’t seem to fit the information from the Quartermaster Generals Loss Returns and Murray’s book. It may well be that the authors had access to better sources than I but according to the sources I have access the figure seems odd.  And the number given as the number of German single-engine fighters in the frontline, 554, must be that of on the Eastern Front. A right figure but maybe the definition “on the Eastern Front” would have been nice to be added to that sentence.

On the page 52 the authors claim that ”The highest  homogenous tactical fighter unit was the Luftflotte. As a rule, every Luftflotte consisted of three combat geschwader, the Luftflotte HQ, a HQ detachment and a Communication Company…” I’m totally lost with that. To my understanding a Luftflotte was area based and was flexible in size and number of subordinated units, and its size changed depending on need. And it was heterogeneous, usually consisting fighter, bomber, reconnaissance etc. units. The main Luftflotten in the East in 1941 (1, 2 and 4) were all more powerful than three Geschwadern, 2 and 4 significantly so. And on 27 July 1942 Luftflotte 1 was about the size of three combat Geschwadern but Luftflotte 4 was massively more powerful, some 11(+) combat Geschwadern. Same to Luftflotte 2 in Mediterranean area (over six combat Geschwadern). In West Luftflotte 3 had almost worth of five combat Geschwadern.

While on the page 57 the numbering of the items in the Bf 109F-4 cockpit colour drawing is sequenced logically that isn’t the case in the Yak-1B cockpit colour drawing on the page 56. I notice that the clock is missing from the Bf 109F-4 cockpit colour drawing, should be in the right top corner.

On the page 70 the claim of 45th IAP seems odd if the date isn’t a typo. The text gives an impression that the regiment claimed eight Bf 109s while losing only a single Yak-1 on 11 July 1942 while part of the Sevastopol air group but most of the air group including all flyable fighters had been evacuated on the night of 30 June/1 July to Kuban and the city itself had fallen on 1 July and the last bigger Soviet formation had surrendered on 4 July even if some scattered resistance to the south of the city continued until 9 July. Or maybe that combat happened after the unit was evacuated from Sevastopol, but in that case it would have been nice to be told by the authors where the combat took place.

The information given in the table “Leading Yak-1/7 Bf 109 killers 1941 – 42” on the page 75 is different in several cases from that given by Mikhail Bykov. e.g. the scores of Sultan Amet-Khan and Schirov are somewhat different and there is bigger difference in I. I. Kleschev’s case, namely 16 individual + 15 shared vs 13 + 10 and in this book it is claimed that K. S. Alekseyev and M. Avdeyev/Advdeev served with the VVS of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet when in fact they served with the VVS of the Black Sea Fleet.

On Further Reading, almost all of the Russian books are unknown to me but according to my understanding Bykov’s book is highly regarded as are Prien’s JG 53 book and his, Stemmer’s, Rodeike’s and Bock’s Die Jagdfliegerverbande der Deutschen Luftwaffe series, even if the latter series is almost purely based on German documents and so has almost purely the German point of view. But I’m surprised that Nowarra’s (in the book typed as Novarra) Die 109 is in the list. IMHO it is obsolete and unreliable source. I have used Willy Radinger’s and Walter Schick’s Messerschmitt Me 109 Alle Varianten: von Bf (Me) 109A bis Me 109E (1997) for information on the early Bf 109 versions, on the later ones I have used a bit old Prien’s and Rodeike’s Messerschmitt Bf 109 F, G & K Series (1993). It doesn’t have specifications, so those I have usually checked from copies of documents and en.wikipedia pages, wiki’s Bf 109 pages are good ones.

IMHO the conclusions are mostly correct, the main problems of the VVS were inadequate training, organisational and control problems and obsolete combat tactics. Yaks, while not equal to Bf 109F-4 were still fairly well-matched to it at lower altitudes, which were the main combat altitude band on the Eastern Front, and had its strong points, e.g. being able to turn tighter. And as always in combat it was vital to try to use own strengths against opponent’s weaknesses.

Sources:
the Quartermaster Generals Loss Returns
Kennblatt für das Flugzeugmuster Bf 109 Baureihe F-1 und F-2 mit DB 601 N Motor Berlin 1941
Ladeplan Me 109 F-4/Z
Datenblatt  109 F4 Augsburg, den 29.11.41
Datenblatt  109 F4 Augsburg, den 1.7.42
L. Dv.T. 2109 F-2 und F-4/Wa Bf 109 F-2 und F-4 Bedienungsvorschrift - Wa

Balke, Ulf, Der Luftkrieg in Europa. Die operativen Einsätze des Kampfgeschwaders 2 im Zweiten Weltkrieg,
    Teil 1 (Koblenz: Bernard & Graefe , 1989).
Bergstrom, Christer, Barbarossa - The Air Battle: July–December 1941 (London: Chevron, 2007).
Bergström, Christer, Mikhailov, Andrey, Black Cross / Red Star Air War Over the Eastern Front, Volume 2,
    Resurgence January–June 1942 (Pacifica, California: Pacifica Military History, 2001).
Bergström, Christer, Antipov, Vlad, Sundin, Claes, Graf & Grislawski—A Pair of Aces (Hamilton MT: Eagle
    Editions, 2003).
Gordon, Yefim, Soviet Air Power in World War 2 (Hinckley: Midland Publishing, 2008).
Khazanov, Dmitriy and Medved, Aleksander, MiG-3 Aces of World War 2 (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2012).
Kopanski, Tomasz, Barbarossa Victims. Luftwaffe kills in the East (Redbourn: Mushroom Model Publishing,
   2001).
Mellinger, George, LaGG and Lavochkin Aces of World War 2 (Oxford, Osprey Publishing, 2003).
Mellinger, George, Yakovlev Aces of World War 2 (Oxford, Osprey Publishing, 2005).
Murray, Williamson, Luftwaffe (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985).
Pitkänen, Mika ja Simpanen, Timo, 20 mm Suomessa - Aseet ja ampumatarvikkeet ennen vuotta 1945 / 20
    mm in Finland - Weapons and Ammunition prior to 1945 (Tampere: Apali, 2007).
Prien, Jochen & Stemmer, Gerhard, Jagdgeschwader 3 “Udet” in World War II Vol. I: Stab and I./JG3 in Action
   with the Messerschmitt Bf 109 (Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing 2002).
Radinger, Willy and Schick, Walter, Messerschmitt Me 109: das meistgebaute Jagdflugzeug der Welt.
    Entwicklung, Erprobung und Technik. Alle Varianten:  von Bf (Me) 109A bis Me 109E (Oberhaching: Aviatic
    Verlag, 1997).
Raunio, Jukka, Lentäjän Näkökulma II (Kuorevesi: Jukka Raunio 1993).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Bf_109_variants#E-3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Bf_109_variants#Bf_109F
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Bf_109#Specifications_.28Bf_109_G-6.29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Graf
http://www.luftwaffe.cz/graf.html
http://www.ww2.dk/air/jagd/jg3.htm
http://www.ww2.dk/oob/bestand/jagd/bstjg3.html
http://www.ww2.dk/oob/bestand/jagd/bijg3.html etc.
http://www.ww2.dk/air/attack/schg1.htm
http://www.ww2.dk/oob/bestand/schlacht/bstschg1.html
http://www.ww2.dk/oob/bestand/schlacht/bischg1.html
/results-of-the-soviet-turn-times-tests.html

128 pages, about 220 b&w photos and six sketches. ISBN: 978 1 78159 034 8
 
A pleasant surprise, not a perfect book on the subject but anyway gives information on an interesting subject and with plenty of interesting black and white photos on British fighters in various stages of construction.

The beginning of the content listing is a bit inaccurate, on the page 4 there is Selected Technical Glossary, which is a good idea. On the pages 5 and 6 the author gives very short summary on the RAF expansion schemes in 1930s, the Shadow Scheme etc. So the Spitfire chapter begins on the page 7. In many chapters the information how the aircraft type in question was built came mainly from numerous photos and their captions, the text in these chapters gives a brief production history of the aircraft. Four of the six sketches are in the Seafire chapter (of the wingtip joint and locking mechanism on the front spar, the main hinge of the front spar, the main hinge of the rear spar and the arrestor hook).

Small Scale Track Builds is a very interesting chapter on the manufacturing Martin Martinet target tug cabin tops, explaining an early 1940s mass production system.

Besides aircraft and aero engine production, propeller production is also explained and funnily there is the typo which according to an anecdotal information got the RAF to substitute the term propeller for airscrew, namely airscrew is typed as aircrew.

The article on a “real” cottage industry is very interesting. Volunteers, mainly half-time women, produced parts in garden huts, lounges of large houses, and usually these shops were for various hand-assembly and non-machine operations. The Ministry of Production, in conjunction with the Ministry of Labour and Supply Departments, extended the plan and by 1943 figures showed that there were some 20,000 outworkers in Britain, many in rural districts, but nearly half of them in the London area. De Havilland’s made particular use of this available labour force and ʽout-worked’ a lot of small components for their Mosquitoes. Long runs of light parts were the most suitable for outworking. A high degree of skill and accuracy was attained by women producing particular components in their own homes or local workrooms. Also in the London and South-Eastern region, 320 National Fire Service Station carried out productive work.

Also there is a chapter on the manufacturing of barrels of 20mm Hispano cannon. Lathes used in manufacturing 20mm Hispanos were longer than I had thought.

Supermarine Walrus, not the most modern plane in early 1940s but IMHO surprisingly it was the first British squadron-service aircraft to incorporate a fully retractable main undercarriage, completely enclosed crew accommodation, and an all-metal fuselage in one airframe.

Also pantograph routing and drilling machine is explained with a sketch.

Lastly de Havilland Hornet, which is IMHO a bit unnecessary addition. As the article itself noted, its production was much the same as that of DH Mosquito but in incorporating stressed Alclad lower-wing skins bonded to the wooden upper wing structure using the new adhesive Redux which technic was also in the fabrication of the aluminium/wood main wing spar even if this latter fact not mentioned in the article. And it was in essence post-war aircraft. The first series production Hornet F.Mk. 1 first flew on 1 February 1945 but the Pacific War was over before any could reach the combat area.

 I have a few complains. There are too much clip and paste text, e.g., in the Chapter on RR Merlin there is an interesting information on testing a new engine, but it only gives the last part of that, made after the final reassembly, clipped from a contemporary report. That part of the chapter would be much more informative if the author had given a short introduction in which he would have given the amount of running hours in earlier testing so that a reader would have got information how many hours a Merlin was run before it was handed over to a customer.

On the man hours needed to produce a Hurricane and a Spitfire. The book gives only one number per type but does not mention the date, but clearly the figures are those achieved in January 1940, probably taken from Postan’s British War Production. It is known that the man hours needed dropped during the production run as the experience and knowledge increased. And by January 1940 Supermarine had produced a bit over 500 Spitfires, so it was still fairly beginning of the learning curve. And Supermarine was a fairly small manufacture, a bigger factory was usually more efficient than a smaller one, e.g., the large Castle Bromwich shadow factory, which began its production in June/July 1940, needed later on significantly less man hours to produce a Spitfire V than Supermarine which itself used 2,200 man-hours less to produce a Spitfire Mk. VC in 1942 than had used to produce a Spitfire Mk. I in January 1940.

The Beaufighter chapter doesn’t make it clear that while the intention was a maximum re-use of Bristol Beaufort components, the end product, i.e., series production Beaufighters had almost no structural commonity with Beaufort. One can see from photos and drawings that Beaufighter's fin and rudder areas have been increased on production examples and the control surfaces have been changed as the trim tabs on the Beaufighter increased in size over those fitted onto the Beaufort. Also wings changed in structure owing to weapons fit and IIRC even landing gear was changed because of the weight increase. And contrast to many other chapters most of the text of this chapter is on the operational history of the type, but at least the photos are on production phases.

The book is clearly for us amateurs and not so much for those who design aircraft structures but an interesting book well worth of having giving interesting information on the subject not too often dealt with.

ʽForties Favourites – 5’, Aeroplane Monthly, Vol. 15, No. 9, September 1987.
Buttler, Tony, ʽType Analysis: Hornet and Sea Hornet: The ultimate piston twins’ International Air Power
   Review, Vol. 10 (2003).
Morgan, Eric B., Shacklady, Edward, Spitfire: The History, Fifth impression (revised) (Stamford: Key
   Publishing, 2000).
Postan, M. M., British War Production, (London: H.M. Stationery Office and Longmans, Green & Co., 1952).
Price, Alfred, The Spitfire Story (London: Cassell & Co, Revised Second Edition, 2002).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine_Walrus
https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/spitfire-v-me109-i-have-found-these-links-on-the-net.29431/page-15
   message 07-03-2011 11:15 PM by Hop

Hard-bound, 206 pages incl. 4 pages of colour profiles.
ISBN : 0-7643-1876-4.

I am a bit disappointed with this book, maybe I had too high expectations. It is a good book with many good qualities. It is solidly based on documents and IMHO generally gives very objective appraisal on the qualities of the Fw 190Ds. It also has many facsimiles of original type drawings, performance charts etc.

But there are some weak points, firstly the layout is too “airy”, i.e. there are too much white on many of the pages. While there are many interesting drawings on different Fw 190C and D prototypes and paper studies there are also some identical or almost identical drawings and graphs, e,g., those on pages 28, 31 and 35. And photos like that of the Fw 190 V53 on pages 82 and 89. There are also some annoying typos, MK 103 being printed when the weapon in question is the more compact MK 108 etc.

While interpreting the Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau G.m.b.H.’s performance chart on page 104 Hermann seems to have took the curve of Fw 190A-8 Notleistung (WEP) with increased boost pressure as that of Fw 190D-9. The curves of A-8 Notleistung and that of D-9 are mostly overlapping but IMHO the Hermann’s error is clear. I checked my interpretation against the 25 Oct 1944 performance chart of A-8 Normaljäger and 24 March 1945 climb graph of D-9 and IMHO my interpretation seems to be true.

The specification table of Fw 190 the D-9/R14 Torpedo-carrier on the page 109 there are two lines for To/from target at height of 3000 m, one with combat power and other with cruising power but strangely that with 2 x 220 l Doppelreiter gives same from target speed in both cases, the other three speeds given give circa 50 km/h difference between combat and cruising power as logic demands. Probably there is/are error(s) in one or both of the from target speed(s) shown.

In the table comparing Fw 190 D-9, P-51 D and Spitfire Mk XIV on the page 122, the wing loading given for Spitfire Mk XIV is much too high, the true one is only 55 per cent of that given. Because correct figures for the gross weight and the wing area are given the error was easy to spot. When for the lightest plane with the biggest wing area is given the highest wing loading, one instantly notice that something is wrong. The low level climb rate given is a little bit too low for Spitfire Mk XIV using 100/130 grade fuel and +18 lbs boost but on the other hand the times to altitudes are clearly more optimistic than the figures in the Aircraft Data Sheet for Spitfire Mk XIV and in Morgan’s and Shacklady’s book but are identical to those achieved during the tests of the Mk XIV prototype JF319. Also if one uses the weight and the wing area given in the table to calculate the wing loading for Fw 190D-9 one gets somewhat poorer figure than the one given in the book.

Fw 190 D-13 vs Tempest Mk V, the wing loading given to Tempest Mk V is a bit under 4 per cent too good. Late Mk Vs had the Sabre IIB engines with max. power of 2,420 hp, max. speed at FTH was almost identical but S.L. speed was better, being something around 620 km/h with 11 lbs boost. And in an RAE test even better and the RAE estimated that with better paintwork on the wing leading edges 650 km/h would have been achievable. Interestingly the Aircraft Data Sheet for Hawker Tempest Mk V Series II powered by a Sabre IIB engine gives time to 6,096 m as 7 min 30 sec. So strangely higher power didn’t produce better time to altitude, also the max. rate of climb was only circa 20,5 m/sec so less than given in Hermann’s table. While the comparison between Fw 190 D-13 and Tempest Mk V is understandably because of the mock dogfight flown between the two types just after the war, maybe better comparison against Fw 190 D-13 would has been Tempest Mk II, of which 50 production aircrafts had been produced by the VE-Day. They were ear-marked for Far East, so didn’t see combat service. Tempest Mk II was somewhat faster and climbing better than Mk V (708 km/h at 4,572 m, 4.5 min to 4,572 m). Or comparison with Spitfire Mk 21, which was the last Spitfire version to reach squadron service before the VE-Day (711 km/h at 6,645 m, 22,6 m/s, 2.6 min to 3,292 m, 4.05 min to 4,877 m, 5.15 min to 6,096 m, 9.9 min to 9,754 m, 11.15 min to 10,363 m).

And the “what if” part. Hermann claims that DB 603 E powered Fw 190 would have been possible year earlier than historically happened. That is based on the claim made on pages 30 and 174, that DB 603 G was in full production by 1944 and that it entered service in April 1944 in the Messerschmitt Me 410 B-1 heavy fighter and the Heinkel He 219 A-5 night fighter. There is some disagreement about production of DB 603 G, but it seems that the series production of it began at the end of 1944 at the earliest. Mankau and Petrick state in their Messerschmitt Bf 110/Me 210/Me 410 book that while Me 410 B series was planned to be fitted with DB 603 G in reality when the Me 410 B production began in May 1944 they were powered by DB 603 As and that Me 410 Bs never got the planned DB 603 Gs. The history of DB 603 G powered He 219s is more ambiguous but it seems that series production He 219s got DB 603 Gs near the end of 1944 at the earliest. Griehl and Dressel in their Flugzeug Profile write that He 219A-0s and most of A-2s, A-5s and five first A-7s were powered by DB 603 A. And in their Luftwaffe Album while writing that the first He 219 A-7 was given service trials in July 1944 and that the forerunner of the He 219 A-5/R-3 He 219 V 28 arrived at Venlo in June 1944, for the prototype trials it was fitted with DB 603 Gs. On the other hand in the table of the He 219 versions and subtypes they claim that He 219 A-5/R-3 subtype was powered by DB 603 Es. But again in the table they give a different information, according to it most A-7 subtypes were powered by DB 603 G plus one subtype with Jumo 213 E and one with Jumo 222A.  According to Green’s and Swanborough’s article all He 219s flown to the UK and transported to the USA were powered by DB 603 As. Aders writes that series production of DB 603 G powered He 219s began only in January 1945.

The DB 603 had run into difficulties being able to get near the demanded 100 h between overhauls only in 1944. Initially, the engines often had to be replaced after 40 hours of operation. Because of the problems DB 603 production schedules and production types were constantly changing. The large-scale production of the DB 603 E began only during the later part of 1944, not at the beginning of 1944 as Hermann claims on the page 184. According to Mankau and Petrick it was planned to begin the large scale DB 603 E production at the beginning of 1944  but already in October 1943 Daimler Benz had informed Generalluftzeugmeister Milch that the beginning of the production was to be delayed to April and in January 1944 it was known that the beginning of the production was postponed into June 1944 and that the initial lot was only sufficient to cover Do 335 and He 177 aircraft and so the Me 410 and He 219 would have to continue using the DB 603 A. And then in May 1944 the expectations were that in June there would be 200 DB 603 AAs available (DB 603A with the 603 G supercharger) and the AA would be the production model during the summer and the first Me 410s powered by DB 603 E would begin roll off the assembly line in September. So IMHO the claim that DB 603 E powered Fw 190 would have been possible year earlier than historically happened isn’t realistic. And the performance of Jumo 213 A and DB 603 A were almost identical and one should also remember, that there were not enough DB 603 As around before very late of 1943, numerous Dornier Do 217 M and N airframes waited for months their power plants and one reason given to the low production rate of He 219 was the lack of DB 603s. With hindsight we know that the high production rate of Me 410 was a mistake but the leaders of the Luftwaffe saw it as a very important plane and so its high priority was a given fact to the production planners. Only after Me 410 production ceased there were DB 603s available to Fw 190 versions.

I have the recollection that contrary to the claim in the caption on the page 191 Soviets didn’t use Fw 190 D-9s against Germans, even though the naval aviation of the Red Baltic Fleet took into service some captured ones.
 
Colour profiles are not at the level one uses to see at this age of digitalization. They look more like water colour works. Some show their object as having light grey fuselage base colour, when Deboeck et al Focke-Wulf Fw 190D Camouflage and Markings Part I shows the same plane having RLM 76 light blue base colour. Some are given a different Werk Nummer when compared the ones given in  Deboeck et al book. A few colour profiles are close to those in Deboeck et al book, e.g., the only known Fw 190D-13 “Yellow 10” of Stab/JG 26 but again, while Deboeck et al gives the base colour of the sides of the fuselage as RLM 76 light blue, in Hermann’s book it is given as light grey. Also photos could be sharper, even in fairly inexpensive softback Osprey the Aircraft of Aces identical photos are reproduced better.

While the book is not as good as I expected it is still a good book on Fw 190Ds. My worst complains are on “what if” subjects and even these got me dig deeper into history of the He 219, which has always interested me. The main focus of the book is handled well. It gives very good information on its subject. There isn’t much on the operational use but that wasn’t what I was looking for from this book. I was looking for information on the technical aspects of the plane and I got that.


A.I.2.(g) Report No. 2360 German Aero-Engine Development 22 June 1945
Air Publication 2458C – P.N. Pilot’s Notes for Tempest V Sabre IIA Engine July 1944 (St. Annes-on Sea: AIR
    DATA PUBICATIONS)
http://www.gyges.dk/He219%20manual.pdf

Aders, Gebhard, History of the German night fighter force 1917-1945 (Somerton: Crécy Books, 1992).
Bowyer, Michael J. F., Interceptor Fighters for the Royal Air Force (Wellingborough: Patrick Stephens, 1984).
Brown, Eric, Heinkel’s Nocturnal Predator, Air International Volume 9 Number 1 July 1975.
Deboeck, Marc, Larger, Eric, Poruba, Tomás̆, Focke-Wulf Fw 190D Camouflage & Markings Part I and II
    (Hradec Králové: JaPo, 2005 and 2007).
Dressel, Joachim and  Griehl, Manfred, The Luftwaffe Album: Fighters and bombers of the German air force
    1933 – 1945 (London: Arms and Armour, 2000)
Green, William and Swanborough, Gordon, Heinkel’s Nocturnal Predator…the He 219, Air Enthusiast Forty
    September - December 1989.
Griehl, Manfred, Do 217̶̅―317—417 An operational history (Shrewsbury: Airlife, 1991).
Griehl, Manfred, Dressel, Joachim, Flugzeug Profile Nr. 10 He 219 (Illertissen: Flugzeug Publikation).
Hentschel, Georg, Die geheimen Konferenzen des Generalluftzeugmeisters. Ausgewählte und kommentierte
    Dokumente zur Geschichte der deutschen Luftrüstung und Luftkrieges 1942 – 1944 (Bernard &
    Graefe Verlag 1989).
Jackson, Robert, Hawker Tempest and Sea Fury (London: Blandford Press, 1989).
Mankau, Heinz & Petrick, Peter, Messerschmitt Bf 110/Me 210/Me 410 An Illustrated History (Atglen, PA:
    Schiffer Publishing, 2003).
Morgan, Eric B.  and Shacklady, Edward, Spitfire: The History (Stamford: Key Publishing, Fifth impression
    (revised), 2000).
Price, Alfred, The Spitfire Story (London: Cassell & Co, Revised Second Edition, 2002).


http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/fw190/fw190-a8-25oct44.jpg
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/fw190/fw190d9-climbchart-flugmechanik-24-3-45.jpg
http://www.spitfireperformance.com/spitfire-XIV-ads.jpg
http://www.spitfireperformance.com/JF319-climb.jpg
http://www.spitfireperformance.com/spit14climbchart.jpg

http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/tempest/tempest-v-ads-sabre-IIb.jpg
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/tempest/tempest-v-rdt1a-level.jpg
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/tempest/tempest-v-rdt1a-climb.jpg
http://www.hawkertempest.se/index.php/thetempest/2014-05-12-18-28-30/markv
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/tempest/tempest-V.html
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/tempest/tempest-II-cfe.html
http://www.spitfireperformance.com/spitfire-21.html
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/150grade/150-grade-fuel.html
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/150grade/engines-cleared-for-150.jpg
http://www.meiermotors.com/index.php/aircraft/klassische-motoren/mercedes-benz-db603e
http://www.deutsches-museum.de/en/collections/machines/power-engines/combustion-engines/internal-combustion-engines/aircraft-engines/aircraft-engine-db-603-e-1944/

http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?disc=169401;article=3306;title=German%20Night%20Fighter%20War%201939-1945;pagemark=20 ejection seats / He219 A-7
       Regrettably already for years defunct German Night Fighter War 1939 – 1945 site
http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/showthread.php?t=51 HE-219 and DB 603G Engines
http://www.luftwaffe-experten.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=11277 Details for He219A-2 WNr.290126?
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http://www.luftwaffe-experten.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=1689 Details on Heinkel He219A-7
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http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/showthread.php?t=1462  Fw 190 C and Me 410 DB 603s
http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/showthread.php?t=51&page=2  He 219 and the DB 603G
http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/engines/db-605-db-603-a-7886.html DB 605 X DB 603