The heaviest armored vehicle fielded by the Germans in World War II was the Panzerjäger Tiger Ausf B. This was built on a slightly lengthened Tiger II chassis topped with a fixed casemate and a 12.8 cm PaK 44 L/55 antitank gun. It weighed seventy-nine tons. A few early versions of the Jagdtiger had a […]…
Category: Historical Study
Know your WW2 History: Lotfernrohr 7
Fascinating piece of World War II Espionage and Military History. Until late 1943, the Norden bombsight was always protected by exceptionally heavy security. Sights were normally stored in air-conditioned, dustproof vaults that were patrolled by armed guards. During training, USAAF bombardiers had to swear a solemn oath to guard the secret weapon with their…
Know Your Weapons: Soviet WWII Machine Guns
The Soviets were latecomers to machine-gun development generally. Prior to World War I, the czarist army bought machine guns from other countries and manufactured some under license. For this reason, Russian machine-gun development and production had to start virtually from scratch after the Russian Revolution. A top priority was the development of a light machine […]…
Military History: Legend of the Old Corps – Gustav Hasford and the Snuffies
Legends of the Old Corps – Gustav Hasford and the “Snuffies” Fascinating story for all you fellow military history book worms like me. Stay Frosty.
We Accept Death, We Hand Out Death II
The forty-three-year-old Gruppenführer Hermann Priess commanded the I SS Corps, formerly Sepp Dietrich’s old formation, which contained 1st and 12th Panzer Divisions, totalling around 240 panzers on 16 December. We have seen via Dietrich’s career how the Leibstandarte expanded from a motorised regiment in 1939 to the largest division in the armed forces by December […]…
The Viking “Great Army”
The Operations of the ‘Great Army’ in Britain (865–79) The term ‘great army’, employed by several contemporary sources to describe this unusually large assemblage of Norse raiders, implies a huge horde of perhaps tens of thousands, but it most probably was not. Although no precise figures are given, it is highly doubtful that it numbered […]…
The Viking Onslaught
Big fan of this guy’s blog, Weapons and Warfare. When you have some free time (like now) be sure to read through his selections. The Anglo-Saxons commonly called them ‘Danes’ or ‘heathens’. To the Franks, they were simply ‘the Northmen’. But history knows them as the Vikings, possibly derived from the West Norse word vikingr,…
Urban Guerilla Sniping v3.0
“History is nothing else than a long succession of useless cruelties.” (Voltaire) When you look at the situation in Syria, you see the logic in Voltaire’s prose. I suppose it is the hopeless romantic in me that wishes for a world that is not filled with asshole tyrants and despots that take advantage of…
Why the Average Civilian Should Study Asymmetrical Warfare
From the Archives, 2015. I got asked this question the other day by a close friend and it occurred to me that I had never really plainly answered that question on this blog, even though I talk about the subject frequently. I think the best way to approach this subject is through historical precedent. It…
The Cavalry of the Wehrmacht Book Review
I am always on the lookout for the more obscure WW2 books and this looks to be fascinating.