With my own birthday coming up, I was reminded of another milestone: this year marks 10 years since the start of PanzerPlace! In this post, we’ll look back on a decade of tanks, research and photography.
It all began as a small experiment back in March 2015: posting photos from my previous museum visits with just a few lines of description. Over time, these short posts didn’t cut it for me. Curiosity drove me deeper into the details, and posts evolved into longer and longer articles. Steadily, the site has grown into a platform for in-depth research, a place for anyone who shares the same fascination for tanks and military history.
Along the way, I’ve had the chance to dig into various archives, uncover forgotten details, and tell stories that go beyond the well-worn clichés. Just as important, it’s also brought me in touch with fellow researchers, museum staff, and enthusiasts around the world.
Photography has always been an important part of PanzerPlace. I’ve always enjoyed trying to capture the little details, the kind of things that are easily overlooked. Over the last 10 years, the quality of the photos has grown alongside the site, thanks to upgraded gear. I have started experimenting with video, and the first 4K clips have made their way onto YouTube. Still, only a fraction of photos and videos actually make it onto the website.
This is where the Facebook page, started in 2019, comes in, providing another avenue to share a broader selection of photos without the pressure of writing an article. Yet in the end, I’m convinced that pictures and words belong together, adding depth and context to tell a more complete story. Which, more often than not, means I end up writing a supporting article anyway… 🙂
Besides changes and improvements in content, the look of the website has also come a long way. From the first simple WordPress blog at panzerplace.wordpress.com, to the move onto the PanzerPlace.eu domain, self-hosted on a Raspberry Pi. That homemade setup didn’t survive, and for a brief time the site was lost. Since then, PanzerPlace has been running reliably with a professional hosting provider. For the last five years, that stability has allowed the site to grow into a proper home for long-form research and photography.
And grow it did. From just a few hundred views in the early years, PanzerPlace steadily built up a loyal readership. Each major research piece helped bring in new audiences — “Panther: A British View” on the REME’s rebuilt Panther tanks drew wide attention, while the multi-part series on King Tiger V2 and Haustenbeck proved another turning point.
By 2023 the site was reaching over 40,000 views annually, and even now in 2025 it has already welcomed tens of thousands of readers. For a niche subject like this, that growth has been both unexpected and deeply rewarding.
There have been some unexpected milestones too, like seeing PanzerPlace cited as a source in several Wikipedia articles. Not the most formal recognition, perhaps, but still a fun reminder that the research here has travelled further than I could have imagined when posting those first photos back in 2015!
Here’s to the first decade of PanzerPlace — and to the next one, filled with more exciting discoveries, stories, and lots of tank history.
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