Author: Melcher Stikkelorum
Remember September: 75 year Market Garden
75 years ago, in the early hours of Sunday 17 September, operation Market Garden commenced. It was a daring plan by Montgomery to outpace the Germans by bypassing the heavily fortified Westwall (Siegfried line) protecting the Ruhr area. This was part of an overarching plan by the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF)…
Summer Offensive Soesterberg: Tank Show
During an hour long show in the tank arena some ten vehicles were showcased. The show was split in two parts of which the first was a theatrical act “The battle of Soesterberg” in which one group of AFVs belonged to the villain, ex-general Roodhart (team red) which had to take it up against the…
Summer Offensive Soesterberg: Cold War Fighter Jets
Last weekend, 24 & 25 August, the Nationaal Militair Museum (NMM) in Soesterberg held its annual summer event dubbed ‘Zomeroffensief’. Last year’s summer event focused heavily on aircraft. This year, too, many aircraft could be admired along the runway in a static-show format. Among the jet fighters were a McDonnell Douglas F-4E Phantom II as…
Leichte Ladungsträger “Goliath”
This little guy keeps coming back almost every museum I visit; the Goliath. Various version with differing means of propulsion have been produced throughout the Second World War. The main goal of this vehicle was to blow up the enemy. It essentially is a wire-guided bomb. An operator would steer it close to a nearby…
Short survey of air filters
It is a familiar sight for German armour enthusiasts: one or two white boxes dotted around a Panther (or Tiger II) wreck. Usually these boxes seem to have been thrown down carelessly and are not in the best of shape. I began to wonder what the function of these boxes was and why they were…
[Video] Militracks 2019 – Panther in action
As promised, here is a video of the Panther at Militracks. It shows the Panther starting its engine and driving around a bit on the museum premises. The Panther from Saumur runs noticeably smoother than the Königstiger from the same museum which was present at Militracks last year. In contrast to the Tiger II last…
Militracks 2019
On 18 May, Militracks celebrated its 10th anniversary. Starting out initially as a small event for enthusiasts of German hardware, Militracks has grown out to be the biggest event for Sonderkraftfahrzeuge and one of the largest events showcasing running military material in Europe. With last year’s showing of Saumur’s Königstiger many would have thought this…
A versatile duct – Tiger’s Feifel system
The name Feifel will ring a bell for many a Tiger fan. Feifel is the name of the air filtration system used on early Tigers, and is named after the engineer, professor Feifel, who pioneered the principle of the cyclone pre-filter. This type of filter was intended for use in very dusty or polluted environments…
Frog-7/Луна-М TEL
In the last week of February a new exhibition was opened in the Nationaal Militair Museum, Soest, The Netherlands. This exhibition, dubbed “When the Russians come”, is dedicated to the Cold War and tells the tale of rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union as well as the tense situation in Europe that resulted.…
Problematic exhausts
Already since its conception, the exhaust system of the Panther had been kind of troublesome. During the Panther’s production various solutions have been proposed and fitted. In this post I’ll elaborate a bit on two of these solutions in particular. Auspufftopf – Exhaust muffler It is often disregarded or simply not known that the well…
Hilary Doyle talks panzer at Panzermuseum Munster
Doyle and “The Chieftain” Morgan do a tour of the German section in the Panzermuseum Munster. In this video Doyle shortly explains some of the history behind the vehicles on display. You might – or might not – know Hilary Doyle as the author of many books he wrote about German tanks together with the…
[Book] Panther by Thomas Anderson
A recent addition to my Panther library is this book by Thomas Anderson. Anderson is not new to the subject and has already published a book on the Panther for Concord’s ‘Armor at war’ series (no. 7006). In this post I’ll do a quick review of the book , telling you if you should buy…
![[Video] Militracks 2019 – Panther in action](https://panzerplace.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/IMGP2343.jpg)
![[Book] Panther by Thomas Anderson](https://panzerplace.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/IMGP1374.jpg)