Book Reviews: Panther Tanks, Normandy '44, & Defence of the West '45, Dennis Oliver

Taken together these two titles, numbers 3 and 18 in the Tank Craft series, give a very decent account of the Panther tank, as deployed on the Western Front circa '44-45. One might immediately think 'what then of the Panther's history and development before this, and it's service on the Southern and Eastern Fronts?' I'll return to these thoughts in due course.

As ever with Dennis Oliver, he deploys his own particular approach, utilising maps, timelines, organisational schematics, unit histories, and so on. Where he follows the standard Tank Craft template is in the central three segments: Camouflage and Markings, Model Showcase, and Modelling Products.

A Panther pauses on a French road, Normandy, '44. [1]

U.S. troops gathered around a disabled Panther.

The Normandy title features five models, all in1/35, and all very impressive. The Defence of the West  book, on the other hand, has just two 1/35 models and a single 1/48 example, the latter getting more pages than are normally given over to any one model in the Showcase section. Between the two books that's eight models, all bar one in 1/35. I'd have liked to have seen at least one bigger kit, in 1/16, perhaps, and one or two smaller models, in 1/72 or 1/76.

The colour profiles in the Camouflage and Markings chapter are nicely done, and are both fascinating and exciting. The range of styles and approaches the Germans employed, despite a palette of just three basic colours (which admittedly varied in themselves) was very diverse and, I find, endlessly intriguing. My only gripe on this front is that either the work of the illustrator, or perhaps the printing process, has rendered the core trio of colours less than 100% satisfactorily.

Panther in 'ambush' camo' scheme with infra-red sight.

Fabulous Panther Ausf G, by Lim Kian Guan, aka ChefLim. [2]

This is particularly noticeable with the green. The Dunkelgelb and Rotbrün, whilst only approximate, are near enough. But the green is way too light and bright. This is exaggerated even more in the bottom of the two cover images, shown at the top of this post (the Defence of the West one, sourced from Pen & Sword's own website listing for the book), where the green is almost fluorescent marker-pen bright! The actual books are closer colour-wise to the very top Normandy Campaign cover image.

Panzer graveyard with Panthers in the foreground.

A grimmer graveyard scene. Is this 'Ursula' again? [3]

It's this colour issue that leads me to dock half a balkenkreuz. Whether Oliver's obsessively detailed coverage is a blessing or a curse - what of Panthers in Italy and Russia, and prior to '44? - depends on how much hardcore info you can take, and whether you can stretch to buying so many titles on the one vehicle.

At an RRP of £15 a time (£14.99 to be exact), they aren't exactly cheap! NB: at the time of posting this review both titles are available at reduced prices, at Pen & Sword's website. I'm lucky in that the publishers have been generous enough to send me copies gratis, for review. Otherwise I'd be lusting after these whilst lamenting the lack of brass in my pockets! Anyway, as regards useful info and inspiration, etc, these books are fab. And I'd highly recommend them.

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NOTES:

Note on photos/pictures: in this post I've tried to use images that do appear in the books under review.  The two exceptions are the final black and white image above, and the colour picture of ChefLim's model, which is from his website.

[1] This picture appears in a smaller/cropped format.

[2] This superb model appears in the Showcase section of the Defence of the West title.

[3] The more eagle-eyed might notice that a charred corpse lies atop the rear deck of this knocked out tank. In fact more than one German soldier died on the back of this particular Panther - which may be 'Ursula', a Panther featured in Oliver's book on several different occasions - as other pictures I found online show clearly. A grisly reminder of the true nature and costs of war.

Book Review: Achilles & M10, Dennis Oliver (Tank Craft, 12)

This is number 12 in the excellent Tank Craft series, by the very diligent and thorough Dennis Oliver, and as with the Images of War title on the M7 Priest, I enjoyed this immensely because it's a vehicle/variant I'm less familiar with. 

Oliver's contributions to this series are quite distinctive on several counts: he goes into great detail on quite small chunks of particular campaigns, and uses certain presentation devices - campaign maps, timelines, unit histories and organisational schematics, etc. - to convey a quite prodigious level of detail.

This rather different approach means his contributions to the series don't follow the more standard format many others do, which usually start with the design and development history, whereas this starts with an intro on British army organisation, then looks at the campaigns in NW Europe in this late (44-45) stage of the war.

A British M10 'Achilles' on Sword Beach, D-Day.

And in turn this means that much of the technical data you encounter early on in the more standard format books in the series is at the back end of this book, in a chapter titled Technical Details and Modifications, where the other titles might more normally have the In Service and In Action chapter. So olivers kind of working almost exactly in the reverse order!

But the good news is that the book in no way suffers from the idiosyncratic change of form that Oliver favours, thanks to the lucidity of his writing and the well organised material. What remains in their standard places are three key segments: Camouflage and Markings (aka, colour profiles), the Model Showcase, and Model Products. These three sections are all excellent, as indeed the whole lot is.

Ramon Sagarra's exquisitely rendered 1/35 Italeri M10.

Another slightly unusual but welcome inclusion is the brief Aspects of British Army, which goes into explaining some of potentially confusing stuff about how the British Army, both in general and at this time, was/is organised. 

I have only one criticism of this otherwise near perfect book, which is that on page 63 the middle row of photos sports the wrong captions, which appear again, but this time correctly, under the bottom row of pictures as well. The result of this editorial/layout gaffe is that a series of pics of wheels are not explained, and instead we get two servings of info on tracks! This is a shame, and I deduct 1/2 a balkenkreuz for it. 

But, like all the Dennis Oliver contributions in this series that I've seen, and indeed the series as a whole, this is an excellent resource for tanks buffs in general, and modelmaking tank buffs in particular. Highly recommended.

German tankers examine a knocked out M10.