Schiffer Books is a small specialty publisher who specializes (among other things) in deeply researched books on abstruse military subjects. Titles include: "Captured American & British Tanks Under the German Flag", "Flamethrowers of the German Army 1914-1945", "German Armored Trains" (2 volumes) and a two volume history of the Jadgtiger tank destroyer that amounts to about a page-and-a-half for every vehicle produced. This book fits right into the mainstream of Schiffer's line.

It was the custom of the Germans during the Second World War to produce assorted vehicles based of the chassis of their main battle tanks. The Tiger I, fabled of story and song, was no exception. For German armor neophytes I should note the difference between the Tiger I (PZKFW VIa) and the Tiger II (PZKFW VIb), the Tiger II while based on the same basic chassis as the "a" model was substantially different otherwise. The Elefant and Sturmtiger were based on the "a" model while the Jadgtiger was based on the "b".

The principal vehicles described here are the Ferdinand/Elefant tank destroyer Sturmtiger/Sturmmorser heavy assault gun and the gargantuan Jadgtiger, Hunting Tiger, tank destroyer.

During the development of the first Tiger tank a design competition occurred between two firms. The loser was the company owned by Dr. Ferdinand Porsche (yes, that Porsche, they made tanks during the Second World War. ) However before the competition concluded ninety or so units of the losing design chassis had been produced (It was like that during WWII, especially for the Germans, production tended to race ahead of development). The Germans have never been ones to let things go to waste, so it was decided to construct a tank destroyer vehicle using the feared 88mm PaK43 gun. This vehicle was dubbed the Ferdinand, after the good Dr. Porsche. On first blush this thing was quite formidable. It certainly looked like a world-beater. It was huge with an impressively long gun barrel hanging out over a vast expanse of forward deck. The gun was mounted in a large, slab-sided, non-rotating casement. The entire visual effect was quite striking. Unfortunately, in action at the Battle of Kursk in the USSR, the Ferdinand was a disappointment. Its huge size made it slow and prone to bogging down. These facts coupled with the general mechanical reliability problems one expects from a new weapon system and the bizarre omission of a machine gun for local defense led to many of the Ferdinands being abandoned by their crews or destroyed by Soviet infantry. These problems were fixed later and the improved vehicles were re-named Elefants. They served in small numbers in Italy until the end of the war but were never a great success.

It was the general German practice to to produce heavier tank destroyer and assault gun variants of their main battle tanks. The Sturmtiger was the Tiger tank's assault gun. It was a jumbo project all respects in the same way as the Elefant. While shorter that the Elefant it was still massive, heavy and slow. The armor was quite thick and only a rear shot or an air strike had much of a chance of destroying it. It mounted a 380 millimeter demolition gun based on a naval depth charge launcher (!). This monster shot a shell about the volume of a medium-sized trash can perhaps two hundred meters every five minutes or so. The gun barrel was rather short so accuracy couldn't have been too hot but considering the size of the shell this wasn't terribly important. The need for these things was felt after the Battle of Stalingrad during 1942, and they would have been quite useful there, but by the time they actually arrived things had changed for the worse for them. Only less than a dozen of these beasts were manufactured during the war and were used in one's and two's in the closing days of the war in Europe.

The final Tiger variant covered by this book is the Jadgtiger. This was an even heavier, even more well armored dinosaur. It mounted a 128 millimeter anti-gun which was developed from the 88mm gun and is only slightly outclassed in size by a few modern tank guns. It was extremely heavy 78 tons and even more prone to bogging down and breaking down. Its huge gun and thick armor also made aircraft and breakdowns this thing's most potent enemies. Less than a hundred were made and they were used in small numbers in the last months of the war.

Like all of the series of Schiffer guidebooks that this book is part of "Elefant, Jadgtiger, Sturmtiger" is priced below $10 but rather thin, 48 pages. This series of books is aimed principally at scale modelers, so photographs (all black and white), a few color paintings, and some engineering drawings. The text is scanty and focuses on features of the vehicles. Proper history is found in thumbnail form only.

For all of that the photos are exquisitly detailed and fascinating to fans of military vehicles. Interior details which are rarely seen elsewhere are well represented. The guys who write these Schiffer books must have a lot of time on their hands to go trawling through old archives for these outre pictures. While there isn't very much actual text, captions explain the photos very well.

If you're read along this far you will have grasped the following self-evident fact. This book is not for general readers. The target audience of scale modelers and fans of oddball German vehicles and weaponry will be the only ones interested (I'm with the second group). So if you fall into that rather narrow sliver of the population you'll dig this book and find the price nice.

(Incidentally, while I was doing research for this review I stumbled across a nifty site for WW II German armor fans -- actungpanzer.com.)

Recommended: Yes