Great news everyone!

The book “Can Openers” written by The_Chieftain is now also being sold through EU which means more reasonable shipping prices for this side of the pond, for those fortunate living in the UK, there’s free shipping for you!

Available at Panzerwrecks

About the author:

I doubt the author requires any introductions but for those who may be living under a rock, The_Chieftain aka Nicholas Moran who’s as old as WoT itself, is an amateur historian and a well-seasoned tanker that started in the Irish Army and now currently serves in the US Army National Guard while also being the Director of Militaria Relations at Wargaming NA. He’s the host of the youtube series “Inside the Chieftain’s Hatch” and has brought us great quality content like the “Operation Think Tank“, furthermore, he writes historical articles for the North American World of Tanks PC portal which is definitely worth a read and can be occasionally spotted giving talks at military events.

As for the book, “Can Openers”:

Coverage of armoured vehicles during WW2 all too often comes to the posterboys of the tank war: the Shermans, the Tigers, the T-34s. “Can Openers” sheds a light on one of the often overlooked aspects of the US Armed Forces, the tank destroyer.

Not to say that the tale of the US tank destroyer is completely unknown. Machines such as the M18 Hellcat and M10 Wolverine are well known to those who read a bit more on armored warfare during WW2. However, some aspects behind the design process may escape the casual historian. This is where this book comes in handy.

Covering the development of the gun motor carriage from the earliest experiments to the more familiar machines of the Second World War. This book brings to light aspects of development that would seem unsubstantial to someone new to the subject, but would have huge effects on design further down the line. Specifications of the machines in question are also made clear and easy to understand even for those new to the subject of armored vehicle history. Everything from the pros and cons of particular designs to changes from later variants that would be missed by the uninitiated reader are pointed out, and it even goes on about how such seemingly small changes can affect the performance of the vehicle and its crew. All of these points taken from actual archival material.

Accompanying the text is a huge series of rarely seen archival photographs from sources such as the archives. These help illustrate some of these seemingly small design points that, nonetheless, would inform later development. Such clear and comprehensive photos do an amazing job of making things clear to even a novice historian.

Note, this book doesn’t cover the deployment of these machines accepted into service, such as such as combat history, units etc. However, the decisions and numerous failures (many of which will seem obvious to the reader in hindsight, but just go to illustrate just how new the idea of full blown tank warfare was back then) that lead to those more well known machines seeing combat can prove just as interesting.

No monetary compesantion was received for the making of this article.