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20 colour and 200 black & white photographs
It was obviously very important that the armoured vehicles of the Wehrmacht in World War Two be well camouflaged, but it was also important that they be recognisable and to this end a complicated array of marking was devised over the course of the war. This book focuses on those markings, which identified vehicles as friendly to other axis forces and which marked out vehicles as belonging to a particular force or unit, and illustrates them with rare and unpublished wartime photographs.
The book is arranged vehicle-by-vehicle and each photograph is accompanied by a detailed caption. It also includes a colour section, featuring side views of a selection of vehicles, and a number of wartime photographs expertly coloured to show how the tanks in question really appeared in the field.
The selection of pictures is very insteresting indeed, and most of the text is well written.
drawback 1: Too often vehicles shown are wrongly identified (i.e. StuG III called StuG IV, SdKfz 251 C misidentified as D, etc). Although rather well known personalities in German WWII-vehicle research are noted as contributors or collaborators, the number of mistakes is disappointing. (Also for the price of the book).
drawback 2: Several coulour pictures are shown and in my modest opinion it is not so clear they do not originate from Photoshop manipulations (Pz IVE, Panther D, PzIV J-title picture). Surely it is interesting to try to interpret b/w wartime photographs by modern means, but these interpretations should be marked as such.
drawback 3: The colour profiles especially are really crappy and do not add any additional information. No comparison to colour profiles in the Concord series.
An interesting book with clear flaws. Information must be checked in detail (compare to the first two volumes of Panzer Colours).
Ian Baxter has been collecting wartime photographs and writing books on military subjects for many years. Resident - Essex
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