Panzerwrecks 1 as its title indicates is just that, and the first in a series, featuring a collection of photos, some of them very rare, of destroyed, abandoned and captured German armoured vehicles. Also included is the odd Allied type used or evaluated by the German, but later recaptured – such as the Sherman 17pdr Firefly, M3 Stuart and M20 armoured car.

The A4 landscape format (279mm x 210mm) lends itself to showing pictures as large as possible – and what a superb collection they are. Some are from official sources, but a lot come from private collections having been taken by servicemen during 1944-45 with sometimes only basic photo equipment, and the passage of time hasn’t been kind to some prints either. However, the majority show German armoured vehicles in various forms of distress and included is, perhaps, the first known photo of the only Panther II built by MAN at its time of capture – without the turret that it now sports in the Patton Museum in Kentucky.

There is no text only a brief introduction, but all pictures are captioned and where unit identities are known these are given, but there is no speculation; if the authors don’t know who it belonged to, they say so and this, no doubt will be the inspiration for plenty of discussion by enthusiasts keen to place tags on the unknown. It’s interesting to see that in the last two years of the War the Germans still made use of obsolete equipment, albeit usually in the support role, but the amount of PzKpfw II types used for armoured transport captured by the Allies is remarkable. A Luftwaffe unit was using a WW1 Renault FT17 as a tractor as PzKpfw 17/18 R 730(f). That captured Firefly mentioned earlier is interesting – it carried only the name ‘Adventure’ and had an ‘A’ Squadron triangle on its rear hull, in addition to German crosses, and must have surprised its Canadian re-captors when they discovered its 17 pdr gun had the muzzle brake from a German 7.5cm gun fitted. (Good idea for a model!).

Some of the ‘wreck’s are really just that – from Panthers disabled by PIATs fired by infantrymen to penetrations from Allied tank and anti-tank guns. Not much has been published on the Allied use of the PIAT (Projector Infantry Anti Tank) to attack German armour, but then the PIAT was generally supposed to be a much despised weapon by its user for a variety of reasons. However, herein it’s power is evident where in the trained hands of some Commonwealth soldiers its shaped charged bombs penetrated the bigger German tanks with disastrous results. Other photos illustrate just how easily an armoured vehicle such as an Elefant or Jagdtiger could be disabled by a hit in the sprocket/drive unit rendering them helpless and to abandoned and often destroyed by their escaping crews so they didn’t fall into Allied hands.

It’s one of those books that you an very easily ‘lose’ yourself in for some time looking at the large photographs, whether you’re a student of German armour or not, probably to see if you can spot something not mentioned in the captions. Panzerwrecks 2 is in preparation and if the standard of this debut volume is maintained we can look forward to a very interesting and collectable series of books as long as the available supply of photos doesn’t dry up.

Ken Jones


Reproduced by kind permission of Military Modelling Magazine  (opens in a new window)