From the Editor – Tank and AFV News

Photo Gallery: M41 Walker Bulldog

May 9, 2016 by tankandafvnews Leave a Comment

Yesterday we were able to snap some pictures of a M41 Walker Bulldog tank sitting outside of VFW Hall 5315 in Baldwin MI. From what we could gather, this vehicle has been on display at this location since at least 1987. The vehicle obviously is not sporting its original paint job, at some point the entire vehicle had been painted light tan, including the tracks. As to the specific model of M41, the USA AFV Register says this tank is an M41A3. We took these with a phone camera on a very sunny day so some of the photos might be a little over or under exposed. Perhaps these will come in handy for a model building looking for some reference images.

Filed Under: From the Editor, Original Articles/Content Tagged With: Baldwin MI, M41 Walker Bulldog, VFW Peacock post 5315

On Vacation

December 3, 2015 by tankandafvnews Leave a Comment

We will be on vacation starting today until the 13th of December. Expect very little posting during this period as we will be away from the computer.

We leave you all with this GIF that appeared at Popular Mechanics.com of an Abrams crew loading and firing the main cannon (Via Redditor /TheStrid at r/MilitaryGfys)

Filed Under: From the Editor, Modern Vehicle News Tagged With: on vacation

From the Editor: Tank Movie Posters

November 9, 2015 by tankandafvnews 1 Comment

Sahara (1943)

Regular readers may have noticed a lack of posts in the past several days. We have had to deal with some family emergencies which pulled us away from the keyboard. Fortunately, it does not seem that the past few days have generated much important news regarding AFVs so perhaps our timing was good. We were thinking about movies today and started to google movie posters. We put together a small gallery of posters for movies featuring tanks. Unfortunately, there have not been very many great films featuring tanks, although there are a few that have developed a cult following. Kelly’s Heroes, The Beast and Sahara are decent films and they are fun to watch. “Tank” staring James Garner is somewhat painful to sit through, and films such as “Tank Force”, “Tank Battalion”, and “The Tanks are Coming (1951)” are painfully dated. And then there is the Battle of the Bulge, a film which transforms the the Ardennes Forest in winter into an arid Spanish plain with US Chaffee light tanks battling M47 “Tiger” tanks. The less said about the 1995 remake of Sahara staring James Belushi, the better. Below is a list of the films in the gallery with links to either the trailer or the entire film. There are of course many other films that feature tanks. These are just a few that we thought had interesting posters.

Sahara (1943) Excerpt

The Tanks are Coming (1951) Trailer

Tank Battalion (1958) Full Film

Tank Force! (1958) Excerpt

Battle of the Bulge (1965) Trailer

Kelly’s Heroes (1970) Trailer

Tank (1984) Trailer

The Beast of War (1988) Trailer

White Tiger (2012) Trailer (Russian language)

: Sahara (1943)

: The Tanks are Coming (1951)

Filed Under: From the Editor Tagged With: Kelly's heroes, Sahara, Tank Force!, Tank movie posters, The Beast of War

Late Summer Break

August 24, 2015 by tankandafvnews Leave a Comment

Tank and AFV News.com will be taking the next few days off from posting. We have to go out of town to take care of some things. But fear not! While we are gone, be sure to check out the numerous WW2 tank related documents available in the free section of the Digital History Archives. These documents include:

21st Army Group Tech Intel Report No. 2 – New Super Heavy German AFVs – Mouse, E-100, & Cricket (1945)

CIOS Evaluation Report No. 153 – Interrogation of the President of the German Panzer Kommission (1945)

Article by US Army Tank Battalion Commander – Tank Versus Tank (1946)

Soviet Tank Memorial in American Sector of Berlin (1952)

Filed Under: From the Editor Tagged With: Taking a break

Books best avoided: Steel Steeds Christie

June 30, 2015 by tankandafvnews Leave a Comment

Lately I have been thinking a good deal about the role of Walter J. Christie in pre-WWII tank development. As I have been attempting to assemble as much information concerning Christie as I can, I discovered that in the mid 1980’s, Christie’s son Edward wrote a short book about his father’s career called “Steel Steeds Christie.” This book was published by a vanity press and is now quite rare and expensive. Fortunately, ARMOR magazine featured a review of this book back in the Jan-Feb 1986 issue. The review, by retired Col, Leo D. Johns, is quite negative, prompting a number of replies from both Edward Christie defending his book, and other readers posting even harsher reviews than the original one by Col, Johns. I have reprinted the original review below as well as the various letters to the editor concerning the book. I have provided these letters in part as a warning to anyone thinking about shelling out the dough to purchase a copy of this rare book, but primarily because I think these letters are really quite entertaining.

Satire: Patton translated into modern business/military speak

June 28, 2015 by tankandafvnews Leave a Comment

Every once in a while we like to take a break from our usual content and present something humorous. Recently in an online forum, we were discussing the latest issue of ARMOR and how much the style of writing has changed over the years. In our opinion, military writing has become far too laden with buzz words and business-speak, resulting in articles that are far more effective as sleeping aids than as ways of transmitting useful information. I issued a challenge to the other forum members to rewrite Patton’s famous Blood and Guts speech in the style of modern officer-speak. A forum participant by the name of xthetenth rose to the challenge, providing the following rendition. We present it here in a paragraph by paragraph comparison with the original. We hope you find it as amusing we we did.

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[Read more…]

Filed Under: From the Editor Tagged With: Modern language, Patton Speech to the third army

From the Editor: Research question for Eastern Front experts

June 3, 2015 by tankandafvnews 2 Comments

While browsing through old issues of ARMOR, we came across this letter to the editor in the Jan-Feb 1951 issue from Generalmajor H. B. Mueller-Hillebran, former Chief of Staff of Germany’s XXXVI Panzer Corps & Third Panzer Army. His letter is in response to an article about Soviet tanks (which unfortunately is in an ARMOR issue not available for download) in which he explains German policy on using captured enemy armor. He also makes the rather startling claim that in the Ukraine from the end of October to the middle of December, his Panzer regiment destroyed 356 Russian tanks while only losing 12 of their own vehicles (a 30 to 1 kill ratio?!) He states that his regiment was equipped with around 100 tanks, half of which were Pz IV and half of which were Stug III. Unfortunately he does not specify the name of his Panzer regiment and his claim of a 30 to 1 kill ratio is a bit hard to swallow. We would be very curious to hear from anyone with access to the Soviet era archives what the Red Army records from this period show in terms of tank losses in Ukraine in late 1943.

Filed Under: From the Editor, Historical Vehicle News Tagged With: Armor magazine, Mueller-Hillebran, Third Panzer Army

From the Editor: M43 SPG pictures

May 19, 2015 by tankandafvnews Leave a Comment

Today we present some photos of an M43 self propelled howitzer on display in Wyoming MI (greater Grand Rapids Metro area.) Only 48 of these were built and there are only three surviving example left. The M43 was essentially the same as the 155mm M40 gun motor carriage but with the 155mm gun replaced by an 8 inch howitzer.

Filed Under: From the Editor Tagged With: M43, Wyoming MI

From the Editor: The Importance of the Hyphen

May 13, 2015 by tankandafvnews Leave a Comment

A recent article from “Russia Beyond the Headlines” inadvertently illustrates the importance of the hyphen in tank designations. Generally, Soviet/Russian tanks include a hyphen in their designation. Examples of this are MS-1, T-34 or T-80. US designations generally are not written with the hyphen, so they look like M4, M60 or M1. Since US tanks are generally designated with an “M” and Soviet/Russian tanks with a “T”, the hyphen is usually not all that important. However, the tricky part comes with US prototype vehicles, which were often designated with a “T.” For for example, the US prototype heavy tank “T34” is easy to confuse with the much more famous Soviet medium tank “T-34.” The Russia Beyond the Headlines article “Saddling the Iron horse: How Soviet tanks were born and bred” runs right into this common pitfall. In discussing early Soviet tank design, they mention the T-20, a development of the T-18 (MS-1), one of the very first Soviet tank designs. However, the accompanying picture in the article is an American T20 medium tank prototype from the 1940’s. The T20 was the first of a series of designs that would eventually result in the M26 Pershing tank. Very different vehicles indeed!

T20

T-20

(Credit to Peter Samsonov for finding T-20 picture)

Filed Under: From the Editor Tagged With: Hyphen, Russia beyond the headlines, t-20, T20

From the Editor: The Patents of Georges Even

May 11, 2015 by tankandafvnews Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago we were looking for interesting patents of armored vehicles for an article on weird and wonderful old time tank patents. While searching we kept coming across patents by someone named Georges Even. All we know about him is that he was French and he was really into the idea of tiny tanks in the 1950’s and 1960’s based on his patents. We thought these were a bit amusing/interesting and so have decided to share them. These designs are somewhat similar in concept to the US M-50 Ontos or the JapaneseType 60 recoilless gun carrier.

Georges Even Armoured Tank 1957