PMMS

bookGerman Military Vehicle Rarities (1) - Imperial Army, Reichwehr and Wehrmacht 1914-1945

By Henry Hoppe

Tankograd Wehrmacht Special No 4001.
Soft cover, A4 size, 64 pages

Review by Peter Brown

While some may think every vehicle used by Germany from the earliest times to date, or at least, the WW2 era, has had in-depth coverage, there are some subjects which have not received the same attention as Tigers. This first in a new series brings some of them into the light. It has subjects from the Great War to the end of the Second World War, including the often neglected inter-war years. All photos are black and white, some are privately-taken and not as sharp as official images but all are well-printed on glossy paper. Each section has a short introduction, like the captions this is in German and English.

First up are chapters on various cars and trucks, mostly former civilian types, in the WW1 era extending to five and seven pages respectively. Captured British tanks from the Great War covers the Mk IV series in six pages. Next are various BMW solo motorcycles in pre-war Reichwehr and Wehrmacht use, spread over nine pages. Several types of 1.5 ton six-wheel trucks used by the Germans in the early WW2 years are covered in a 12-pages section, showing different official and locally modified body styles. Early production Sturmgeschutz with short 75mm gun get 11 pages (counting a full-page photo inside the front cover) with record shots and in the field photos. The SdKfz 252 ammunition carrier and SdKfz 253 artillery observation post based on the armoured one-ton halftrack series which served in StuG units are covered in a six-page feature. Rounding off this edition are two unusual subjects, with five pages on field bakery trailers in both World Wars, and two pages on field delousing ovens.

While some of the vehicles have been covered elsewhere, there is a lot new here for modellers looking for unusual German equipment. This could become a long-running series, produced to the same high quality as the parent Tankograd Militarfahrzeug series it is available from several distributors

For more details contact the publishers Verlag Jochen Vollert on jochenvollert@tankograd.com


Page created 31 July 2004

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