The 21 January 1944 issue of the US Army weekly published photographs and findings from the examination of German and Japanese armoured vehicles that had fallen into American hands. The cover featured a photograph of a Tiger tank belonging to the 1st company of the 504th Heavy Tank Battalion, captured by the Allies in Tunisia.

The article's authors complained at length about the metric system used in Europe, which gave American technicians examining the captured vehicles sleepless nights — and mechanics tasked with returning the often heavily damaged machines to working order for testing even more so.

Overall, American technicians gave a mixed assessment of the quality of German armoured vehicles. They highlighted the high quality of key components such as the engine, gearbox, and gun. They did, however, point to evident cost-cutting in other areas — such as the quality of the hull construction on the half-track personnel carrier Sd.Kfz. 251.

I should note for the reader that the summaries of individual pages below are in no way literal translations — they are brief paraphrases of their content.

SELECTED CONTENTS:

Half-Tracks, Cars, Motorcycles

"The Nazis have plenty of half-tracks and scout cars" — what an Allied soldier should know about the German armoured personnel carrier Sd.Kfz. 251, the half-track tractor Sd.Kfz. 7, and some other equipment.

Tracked Armoured Vehicles

This page gives a brief overview of the light tank PzKpfw II. It also covers the common German practice of converting captured vehicles for their own use, citing the Marder III tank destroyer and a self-propelled gun on the French Lorraine tractor chassis as examples. An inset column briefly describes the starting procedure common to most German, Czech, and Italian vehicles.

Panzer III and IV Tanks

The PzKpfw III and PzKpfw IV tanks. The authors immediately caution the reader that calling Nazi tanks "Mark III" or "Mark IV" is incorrect — that is British terminology. A pity the authors then undermine their own push for terminological accuracy by writing PzKW instead of the correct German designation PzKpfw.

Tiger Tank

The Tiger tank. American experts discuss it with evident respect, describing it literally as "the biggest tank now in combat use by any nation."