May 2008 Mailbag

By Armchair General

 

 

Where in the World is ACG?
Armchair General shows up at ENFILADE! 2007 hosted by the Northwest Historical Miniature Gaming Society (NHMGS), historical battles from ancient times to modern conflicts in miniature. ACG continues to inspire scenarios to be transformed into the 3-D environment of historical miniature wargaming. For more information visit nhmgs.org.
"I’ll see you on the battlefield!"

Bryan Shein
President, Pacific Sky Games & Devil Dog Design
President, NHMGS

See “You Command Historical Miniatures” item in the March 2008 issue Dispatches department for more from Bryan on adapting ACG interactive articles as scenarios for tabletop miniatures gaming.

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Numerous readers noted the obvious disconnect between the panzers, location, and year cited in this photo’s caption and the actual types of panzers shown and the obviously Eastern Front locale.

Mistaken Identity
I really enjoyed the January 2008 issue, my very first. However, I feel I must point out an error in the caption to the photo on pages 48-49 [“A Tale of Two Doctrines: France, 1940” by John Antal]. The tanks in the photo are (on the left) a Panzer IV with a 75mm KwK40/L43 and (right) a Panzer III with the 50mm KwK39/L60. Neither of these two versions was available until early 1942, and could not have been in France in May 1940 as stated in the caption. And although I’ve never been there, the terrain looks suspiciously like the Eastern Front. I look forward to my next issue. Thank you.

Tony Wessel

You may never have visited Eastern Front battle sites, but your suspicion as to where this photograph was taken seems right on the mark – in fact, it looks a lot like the terrain in Ukraine west of my wife’s hometown, Kharkov. Having been through that area many times, I should immediately have picked up the apparent disconnect between the caption furnished to our Images Editor by the German archive, Ullstein Bild, and the “steppes” in this photo. This photo got a lot of reader letters/emails and our webmaster even posted a discussion thread on our ACG website forums for readers to comment on it. The photo caption we ran in the magazine with this image was based on the information that accompanied it when our Images Editor got it from Ullstein Bild, which misidentified the "French" location and year. I guess the German archivist needs to brush up on World War II panzer battles and I need to pay closer attention to the terrain next time I visit my Russian in-laws in Ukraine! What’s even worse, however, is that the article’s author, Col. John Antal, never saw this photo we ran with his article – as a “tanker par excellence” he would certainly have noticed the misidentification – John! I have just dropped to give you 20 pushups! HOOAH!

Thanks to all of our readers who noticed this misidentification and took the time to point it out to us.

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