Peter Samsonov – författare

A noted authority examines the roles played by Germany’s Hetzer tank destroyer and the Soviet SU-76M self-propelled gun during the battle for Hungary in 1945.During World War II, Germany and the Soviet Union soon found that their light tanks were obsolete; while their small guns were no longer useful against the enemy’s armoured vehicles, the chassis allowed for installation of a larger gun at the cost of a rotating turret. Keen to utilize existing technology, Germany and the Soviet Union approached this challenge differently. While the Germans turned their PzKpfw 38(t) tank into a tank destroyer, first the open-topped Marder III and then the fully enclosed Jagdpanzer 38(t), nicknamed the ‘Hetzer’, the Soviet designers turned the T-70 light tank into an infantry support gun capable of engaging enemy armour, its open-topped fighting compartment adding communication with accompanying infantry.In this study, leading armour expert Peter Samsonov’s insightful analysis is complemented by specially commissioned artwork and mapping alongside carefully selected archive and present-day photographs, revealing the origins, development and combat performance of these two types at war. Both were widely employed amid the tank battles of early 1945, as Soviet forces reached deep into Hungary and the Axis armies mounted one last counter-offensive on the Eastern Front, Operation Spring Awakening.

This illustrated study pits Germany’s PzKpfw III against the Soviet Union’s T-34 in the wake of Hitler’s 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union.This book evaluates the PzKpfw III and T-34 medium tanks fielded by Germany and the Soviet Union during 1941. Both designs were intended to be the primary medium tanks of their respective armies, but owing to manufacturing difficulties, neither was available in quite the numbers intended. Even though both tanks were relatively new, neither was deemed entirely satisfactory, and replacements for both were already on the drawing board. Nevertheless, it was these tanks that clashed in what the Soviet Union called the Great Patriotic War.While the T-34 rapidly established a fearsome reputation only sometimes borne out by its actual performance, the PzKpfw lII was smaller, lighter, and not as well armed as its Soviet opponent but benefited from the support of a more seasoned and better structured army. Full-colour artwork, archive photographs and authoritative text drawing upon Russian- and German-language sources combine to reveal how the Germans harnessed the advantages of combat experience and superior organization to counter the T-34’s tactical strengths, but also how the PzKpfw III quickly lost relevance as it became evident that it could not carry a gun powerful enough to destroy the T-34 at range.

This fully illustrated volume investigates the battles between Germany’s Panzer IV medium tanks and US Lend-Lease M3 tanks crewed by Soviet tankers on the Eastern Front in 1942.In December 1941, a shipment of M3 medium and M3 light tanks, the latest and still unproven products of the US arms industry, arrived in Murmansk. Rapidly pitched into combat, these American designs had to contend with the PzKpfw IV, originally envisaged as a close-support tank but refined in the light of combat experience gained in Poland, France and North Africa.In this study, armour expert Peter Samsonov sets out the origins, development, strengths and limitations of these very different tank types. He explains how as the Germans regained their footing after their defeat at Moscow and turned their sights south towards Stalingrad in the summer of 1942, the two sides locked horns in some of the bloodiest battles of World War II. Recovering after the appalling losses of 1941, the Red Army’s armoured corps had to field inexperienced crews and tanks that were foreign to them in more ways than one while fending off an opponent that had a well-refined tank along with veteran crews to operate it.The author’s insightful analysis is complemented by archive photographs, full-colour maps and specially commissioned artwork to reveal these armour types at war in the crucible of the Eastern Front.