Panzer V Panther
May 1, 1944. Marshal of the Soviet Union Ivan Stepanovich Konev had a right to be pleased with himself and his men as he gazed at the maps spread before him. Read more
Panzer V Panther
It was surely as ungainly a weapon as was ever made, and one of the clumsiest. It was a 3-foot, 32-pound steel tube with a monopod to support it, a huge trigger on the underside, and a padded shoulder piece at one end. Read more
Panzer V Panther
Geijsteren Castle sits north of the Dutch town of Venlo on the banks of the Meuse River. In late 1944, the castle was a strongpoint in the local German defenses and under attack by elements of the British Sixth Guards Tank Brigade. Read more
Panzer V Panther
By Kevin M. Hymel
“OH MY GOD!” thought tanker Joe Cotten. “We’re shooting machine guns at a Tiger Royal!” It was late December 1944 in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France, near the German border. Read more
Panzer V Panther
A column of German Mark V Panther tanks advanced through a thick fog north of the French town of Mortain, blindly firing their machine guns. Read more
Panzer V Panther
Operation Bagration, the largest operation of World War II, has never been adequately acknowledged in the West to the same extent as a number of smaller campaigns. Read more
Panzer V Panther
Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr., the commander of the newly constituted U.S. Third Army, had one simple order that late summer of 1944: “Go east and go like Hell.” Read more
Panzer V Panther
When American soldiers landed in France in June 1944 as part of the great Allied crusade to liberate Europe, they were well trained, fully equipped, and brimming with confidence. Read more
Panzer V Panther
The Normandy landings, the fighting at St. Lô and Caen, Operations Goodwood and Cobra, and the subsequent Argentan-Falaise Pocket have always drawn major attention from historians, with respect to the early struggle for supremacy in France. Read more
Panzer V Panther
For the Allied tankers and infantrymen of the American, British, Canadian, and Free French armies battling German Panther and Tiger tanks in Normandy in the summer of 1944, the Sherman tank’s failures were glaringly evident as their own shells bounced off the hulls of the Nazi armor and they were themselves destroyed at a far greater range by the powerful German tanks. Read more
Panzer V Panther
The city of Ternopil, located on the eastern bank of the Seret River, was founded in 1540 as a Polish military stronghold. Read more
Panzer V Panther
After four months and a 600-mile advance from the beaches of Normandy into Brittany and then through eastern France, the spearhead of Lt. Read more
Panzer V Panther
Lieutenant General Omar Bradley had reason to be pleased by the last week of July 1944. His First Army had scratched out a substantial foothold on the Normandy coast, capturing three times more French territory than his British allies. Read more
Panzer V Panther
During the Battle of the Bulge, Adolf Hitler launched his last great counteroffensive along the Western Front. From full armored divisions running on gasoline fumes to “American schools” teaching spies how to pose as Allied soldiers, Hitler used everything in his arsenal to try to turn the tide of the war. Read more
Panzer V Panther
With a quarter of a million German troops pouring through the Ardennes Forest, three Americans fleeing in a jeep should have raised no alarm. Read more
Panzer V Panther
“Hitler’s generals, raised on the dogma of Clausewitz and Moltke, could not understand that war is won in the factory.” Read more
Panzer V Panther
Early in World War II, German panzer forces trampled all foes. Confidence suffused the Germans, and their tank designs stagnated. Read more
Panzer V Panther
World War II tanks usually had aggressive- or ferocious-sounding names, such as Hellcat, Panther, or Tiger. Yet the tendency was not universal, as with British Cruisers or the American M-3 Honey. Read more
Panzer V Panther
The Battle of the Bulge lasted an entire month, and was fought over almost the entire Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and half of Belgium, yet finding all of the battlefields and historic sights is a bit more difficult than locating the D-day beaches. Read more
Panzer V Panther
As it turns out, Belgium was the perfect place to hide a counteroffensive against the Allies. It is a mountainous country where towns are squeezed close together; the hills are punctuated by forests and small farms; and the forests are filled with small, thin trees while most farms are on slopes. Read more
