Fight over World War II-era tank goes to court

http://money.msn.com/ via A.P. ^ | 9/12/14

[BBell]

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (AP) - A company headed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has filed a lawsuit in the San Francisco Bay Area over a World War II-era German tank it says it paid $2.5 million for but never received.

The Panzer IV tank was part of a fleet of military vehicles amassed by Stanford University-trained engineer Jacques Littlefield, who kept them on his family estate up a winding, forested road above Silicon Valley. After his death, his family turned them over to the Massachusetts-based Collings Foundation, which put some of them up for auction in Portola Valley in July

[jmacusa]

Yeah I hear you on that. A Mark VI Tiger or King Tiger would be awesome. They looked like some kind of Gothic mechanical beasts snorting fire and brimstone. (plus an 88mm tungsten steel tipped shell with an fps of almost a mile a second.) But the Panther Mark V was my favorite. With that sloped frontal armor, the kind of rolled gun mantlet with the two holes for the turret binoculars on the right side, the main gun in the middle and the left side machine gun port in the turret mantlet it looked like some living mechanical monster on the prowl. No doubt about it, the Krauts had the badest ass, coolest looking stuff. My wife who has an interest in WW2 history was once glancing through one of my books on German Panzer divisions and came across some color photos of German tank crews in their black uniforms, with the Iron Crosses, the skulls and cross bones and said ‘’Boy, looking at these guys(the Germans) you don't have to know much or even anything at all about WW2 to know the way these guys dressed they sure weren't the good guys’’.

[jmacusa]

Panzer Mark IV. The Germans would later use the chassis of this tank to make various tank destroyer vehicles and self-propelled assault guns.

[publius911]

Bookmark

[section9]

Contrary to popular opinion, the Mark IV was the most serviceable, most reliable German tank of the war. The The Tiger and the King Tiger were hanger queens and gas hogs. Way too much money was spent on the a Tiger program that could have been better spent augmenting the Mark IV and making more Panthers,

The Panther, of course, was the premier German tank of the war. However, it had its own teething problems because of its rush into production in mid-1943. Had the Germans built the Panther and the Mark IV the way we built the Sherman, the war in Russia would have been more protracted than it turned out to be.

[jmacusa]

Yeah. The Mark IV was the work horse all right. One of the problems with the Panther and the Tiger was the over-lapping road wheel set up. To fix say, one wheel behind one in the front you had to take off tow to either side!

[xrmusn]

The Panther, of course....etc...
= = = = = = = = = = = = =
I was going to ‘call’ you on Panther but figured it may be a ‘set up’

So I will ask if you are referring to the Panzerkampfwagen?

Just asking....<: <: <:

[Larry381]

I read an article that claimed the Germans destroyed between 50-75,000 AFVs (mainly tanks) on the eastern front and also destroyed about 125000 Russian aircraft.

[BBell]

What's the difference between Nazis and communists?

The Nazis had the spiffy uniforms.

[The_Media_never_lie]

Next best thing: go to the tank museum in Danville, VA.

[X Fretensis]

That may well be the case. But by April 1945 the Soviets had 25,000 tanks and tank destroyers, and the Germans had a few hundred tanks to face them with.

[X Fretensis]

I heard an old saying once to the effect, that the army with the simplest uniforms generally win the war.

[FreedomPoster]

Bingo.

There’s a great quote by Hayek on my FR profile page that covers that well. It’s the 3rd one down, the 2 paragraph one by Hayek.

[jmacusa]

Yup. Without a doubt. They had help in designing some them from the costume department of the giant German film company UFA but most were upgrades of earlier German uniforms from about the 1860s to 1939. In particular the black uniforms of German tank units, not the latter crews of the self-propelled artillery and tank destroyers units retained the skulls and cross bones of the old German Hussar cavalry forces. And of course those Iron Crosses(actually a variation of ‘’The Malta Cross of the Knights Templar). Yeah, without a doubt the Krauts dressed like they wanted to kill you.

[jmacusa]

All ‘’Panzerkampfwagen’’ means in German is ‘’armored fighting wagon or more correctly ‘’vehicle’’. I was speaking the Panzerkampfwagen V Ausf G(Sd Kfz 171) other wise known as ‘’the Panther tank’’ My friend, I’m a walking wikipedia on German armor of WW2. Anything you’d like to know just ask.