Customer Reviews

Panzer III & Its Variants (The Spielberger German Armor & Military Vehicles, Vol 3)

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Panzer III & Its Varients is THE book to buy about this German Tank of WWII. All of the models and varients are captured- the prototypes, production tanks- in many excellent scale drawings, cut aways and photos.

What makes this book so excellent is the quality of the photos and line drawings. Everything is covered in a single source- hull, chassis, powerplant, suspension, turret, armament, armor, equipment- it's all there.

Two minor irritants, first is that many of the line drawings have not been translated from the German orginal. Secondly, many of the photos & drawings about the Sturmgeshutz (self propelled gun varient) are duplicated in Spielbergers work on the Sturmgeshutz.

An excellent work, a valuable collection to anyone's collection, highly recommended.

What can be said? Since I have been a modeler/history lover (45yrs.) Spielbergers works have been considered the top of the line as far as details go.If you are looking for the unit histories or battle tactics of these tanks than this isn't the book;or series of books for you .If you are looking for the technical stuff that I love, then Spielberger is for you!Panzer 3 and it's variants is one of the early books in this series and it covers the whys as to the creating of this vehicle very well. All the tech stuff is there as mentioned with some history as to use of the tank.If details matter then get this book.T.M.L.

Spielberger's Panzer III book is one of his older works and is a bit dated. It isn't that the book is "bad" but rather much new information has come to light in the decades since this volume was first written. Depending on what you are looking for in a book, the Spielberger series in general may or may not be for you. The works tend to be on the technical and developmental side. So, if you are looking for unit allocations, wartime combat photos, camouflage and marking information, etc., the books are lacking. But they do go into great detail about the automotive/mechanical aspects of the featured vehicle family. You do get a nice mix of original technical drawings and illustrations, older Hillary Doyle line drawings (not the most current or accurate since the book is older), and a variety of black and white photos illustrating the different versions of the Panzer III and then various details like the deep wading muffler, etc. There are a couple color plates but nothing spectacular. My main complaint with the Panzer III book is, that while it is called the Panzer III and its variants, half of the book pertains to the StuG III. The problem with that is the StuG has its own volume. Much more info on the Panzer III gun tank should have been in this book. The Spielberger Panzer IV book suffers the same way in that 2/3 of that title cover vehicles that used the same chassis. At least with the Panzer IV, a second, newer, volume was completed before the author's death.