Feldgrau.net

I could comment that before you need OP tanks you need sufficient artillery to make them worth while. Looking at the picture there aren't any obvious signs of arty specific instruments and there aren't the number of antennas one might expect (based on UK's quite extensive use of OP tanks including m...

After cutting thru the distortions it would seem that PW continued to be used for civil labour tasks. Using PW for such work was entirely legal, Germany used western PW in this way and western allied countries used GE, Italian, etc PW in this way. There was no legal requirement for PW to be released...

I think there's some confusion here. Western allies did not hand German PWs over to the USSR, whether or not they had fought on the Eastern Front - how would the W allies know where any GE PW had fought without interrogating them all? Plainly a daft notion, not to mention totally untrue. However, su...

having property commandeered under military government was not being 'wronged', it was legitimate, like billeting.

I don't have a copy of the Army Act 1944 to hand. However, looting of any sort was an offence under this Act (which was the British Army's disciplinary code). This also means that ordering it was an unlawful command, and tacitly permitting it was condonation of an illegal act. It was therefore a dut...

I can well believe that if someone with a foreign accent fronts up for a complete set then its just possible that the manager would be called. But a 'hiker' buying the local maps? (Although wearing ledenhosen might have raised eyebrows). N Ireland always a bit different.

All the normal scales, 1:25000, 1:50000 (and its predecessor 1 in-1 mile), have been readily available over the counter back to the 1950s which is as long as I can remember them on sale.

Details of airfields were omitted from OS maps until quite recently. But you'd have thought that in the 1930s any fractionally competant intelligence organisation would have acquired total OS map cover of UK in all available scales.

I recently read Peter Fleming's old Operation Sealion - and IIRC this subject of mapmaking and topographical intelligence is covered....in that the Sealion planners ' access to maps for the South of England was equally very poor, and wasn't supplemented very well at all by photo recce. That's actua...

Since my last post I've read Max Mangilli-Climpson's 'Larkhill's Wartime Locators - Royal Artillery Survey in the Second World War'. This isn't about map making because that was an RE matter. However, RA did help with topo survey in some places at some times. One of those was in Syria/Iraq/Persia. T...

The problem with the Vladis route was the limited capacity west from there, that's why it wasn't a real option to Murmunsk, remember BAM wasn't built until the 1970s. The southern route was also very limited in capacity. A very important US contribution was rail equipt, not least rails themselves. T...

According to Chris Bellamy in his recent book 'Absolute War' it probably made the difference between eventual victory and the USSR's defeat in 1942. Interestingly the Finns seem to have restrained the activities of the German 4th Mtn Army in N Finland and prevented them cutting the route South from ...

My understanding is that the nation that takes the prisoners is responsible for them and therefore makes there own arrangements for them. As Prof Chris Bellamy has pointed out in his recent book 'Absolute War' about the E Front front neither Hitler nor Stalin had any motives to be concerned about th...

What seems fairly clear is that 106 spent no more than 4 or 5 months as an ATk regt. They were issued with 37mm in Oct or Nov 1940, and held them until departing for Greece in late Feb or early March 1941.

With the caveat that I always try and avoid secondary sources if I want reliable info, the following is taken from Farndale's "The Years of Defeat 1939-41" Pg 119 - 106 (Lancs Yeo) Regt part of 1 Cav Div, horsed, arrived Palestine (Haifa) 20 Feb 41. Soon began to mechanise (those familiar ...