Customer Reviews

Jagdtiger: The Most Powerful Armoured Fighting Vehicle of World War II: OPERATIONAL HISTORY (Schiffer Military History)

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The Jagdtiger was Germany's heaviest operational armored fighting vehicle. Based on the chassis of the Tiger II (or "King Tiger"), it replaced the turret with a fixed fighting compartment carrying a massive 128 mm antitank gun. It was a technical failure, since operations showed that the drive train couldn't deal with the vehicle's vast weight, and over half the vehicles built had to be blown up after they broke down, bogged down, or simply ran out of gas. This is the second half of Andrew Devey's work on the Jagdtiger, and for the model builder or historian, it is the more useful of the two. Other reviewers have taken issue with technical errors present in Volume One, which covered the development of the machine. Volume Two is more promising, in that it details the operational history of the only two battalions to operate the Jagdtiger, the 653rd and the 512th, and Devey attempts to track as many of the 80+ machines built as surviving records allow. For an operational history of the just the 653rd, a better choice would be Karlheinz Munch's "Combat History of Schwere Panzerjager Abteilung 653," published by J.J. Fedorowicz in Canada. It has more detailed information, as well as more oversized photos with superior reproduction. But for the 512th, Devey's book is virtually the only source in English (Otto Carius' memoir, "Tigers in the Mud," has some info on one company of the 512th, which he commanded, but the companies operated independently of each other). While the book has its weaknesses, particularly in photo reproduction, it is still a breathtaking improvement on what was available just four years ago.

Full of excellent photographs and day by day coverage of the Jagdtigers in operation throughout WW II.