1944 Cintheaux, France

i need pics of the field his tank was destroyed in and the wall the canadian forces were behind.

Heres a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/michael_wittman

vector123 wrote:

i need pics of the field his tank was destroyed in and the wall the canadian forces were behind. Heres a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/michael_wittman

The link you posted does not work.  Try this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Wittman.  According to that link the only known picture of the tank was taken a year after its destruction.  The picture is included.  If you are doing a dio of the site, it does not look like you'll need much of the village - the tank appears to be in the middle of a field.

vector123 wrote:

It was but the Canadian forces that distroyed the tank were behind a wall that was just beside one of the towns.

I thought the wiki article implies that this claim for his death is inaccurate.  That the forces most likely responsible were in a treeline opposite the town?

Here is the excerpt I was referring to (Itallics are mine):

"Michael Wittmann was killed on August 8, 1944 while taking part in a counterattack to retake Hill 122, near the town of St. Aignan de Cramesnil. The town and surrounding high ground had been captured a few hours previously by Anglo-Canadian forces during Operation Totalize.^[21][22]

A group of seven Tiger tanks from the 3rd Company and HQ Company, Schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 101 supported by several Panzer IV and Stug IV were ambushed by tanks from A Squadron, 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry, 33rd Armoured Brigade, A Squadron, the Sherbrooke Fuisilier Regiment, 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade and B Squadron, The 144 Royal Armoured Corps, 33rd Armoured Brigade.^{[23][7][24][10][9][22]}

The killing shots have long been thought to have come from a Sherman Firefly of ‘3 Troop', A Squadron, 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry (commander - Sergeant Gordon; gunner - Trooper Joe Ekins), which was positioned in a wood called Delle de la Roque on the advancing Tigers' right flank^[25] at approximately 12:47.^[26]

It appears the shells penetrated the upper hull of the tank and ignited the Tiger's own ammunition, causing a fire which engulfed the tank and then blew off the turret.^[27]"

Osprey makes a book on that particular engagement- Firefly Vs Tiger....

http://www.ospreypublishing.com/store/Sherman-Firefly-vs-Tiger-_9781846031502

sure that would be greatly apprieciated.  browniii keep reading down the article to the most recent claim and also you should watch Battlefield Mysterys.  all im having trouble with is the landscaping.

ps there were so many tanks in the battle that im not going to get them all im going to shorten the numbers abit.

HO means "Half O" scale, or 1/87th, the most popular model railroad scale.. Roco makes a lot of armor in HO scale.. When you said you were build a dio with a bunch of vehicles, I assumed you'd be working in a small scale...

You doing this in 1/35th?  What are your base dimensions and how many vehicles are you using?

vector123 wrote:

sure that would be greatly apprieciated.  browniii keep reading down the article to the most recent claim and also you should watch Battlefield Mysterys.  all im having trouble with is the landscaping. ps there were so many tanks in the battle that im not going to get them all im going to shorten the numbers abit.

You know what, I did read it, but I got the names mixed up...   I'm glad you directed me back to it.  Interesting stuff.  Interesting stuff indeed.

So, OK, you need pics of the village...

vector123 wrote:

well i was going to cut down on the amount of them that were realy in the battle so 3+5=8 so i guess thats how many im using ive got 5 out of 8 already im just having trouble doing the vehicle placment and landscaping the field (because i have no pics yet).

Let me just ask something.  You are doing 8 vehicles in 1/35th??  Are you trying to depict both the Canadian and the German tanks?  How long of a shot was the 'kill shot'?  Even in 1/35th scale, your talking several feet...  I'm not trying to shoot down your idea, I'm just trying to visualize what you have planned and how you are going to pull it off on a base smaller than an Olympic sized pool...

I just re-re-read that Wiki page and it says (if I read it correctly) that Wittman's tank was 469 feet from the Canadian position behind the wall.  Even in 1/35th scale, your looking at close to 15 feet of seperation...  So, I guess my question is what, exactly are you trying to depict and how concerned are you about historical 'precision'?

   1/35? Have you thought about maybe a two-part dio, one dio of the firefly behind the wall and the other of Wittmanns destroyed Tiger?

 Here's a link to a pretty in-depth account of the engagement.

  http://wwii.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=666

Unless you are building an extremely small scale dio, like 1/350, any building in the dio would be fiction...Wittman was killed in an open farmer's field...the closest man-made thing would be a road...here's some diagrams and some then and now pics... have an actual arial recon pic of the same area taken after the engagement and you can actually see the three Tigers that are depicted in the diagram...still looking for it, but ther isn't a building for hundreds of meters in that shot...

Yeah, I was looking over the same battle map, Manny... You could put that Tiger on a landscaped ping-pong table and it would still be all alone out there...

Vector, you may want to re-think what your're doing here... It sounds to me like you're about to commit the biggest mistake a new diorama-builder can make... For your first build, I'd highly suggest you try something a bit smaller in scope than a museum-sized "Diozilla"..

Don't get me wrong, all of us went through that stage, but I can about guarantee you that it'll get to be too much, too fast, and too expensive, and you'll likely lose interest in it way before you think you will... And if you plan on building Wittman's Tigr after the fight, well... That's a whole 'nudder can o' worms...

Why don't you give us some dimensions that you're planning?  Sketch out your lay-out if you could..

Mansteins revenge wrote:

Manny,

In the line drawing, what are the scale?  Those structures represented either side of the common grave - do you know what they are?  I tried to pick that up from the map, but couldn't really tell from the scan you posted.

The description that he is relying on for this dio reference a wall that the Canadian tanks were in a 'chateau' grounds at Gaumesnil (the three structures in your image?) and had 'created firing holes in the property's wall', so I think this is where he is getting the idea that he needs to build some structures.  But, yeah, even that was about 150 yards away.

Hans von Hammer wrote:

Yeah, I was looking over the same battle map, Manny... You could put that Tiger on a landscaped ping-pong table and it would still be all alone out there... Vector, you may want to re-think what your're doing here... It sounds to me like you're about to commit the biggest mistake a new diorama-builder can make... For your first build, I'd highly suggest you try something a bit smaller in scope than a museum-sized "Diozilla".. Don't get me wrong, all of us went through that stage, but I can about guarantee you that it'll get to be too much, too fast, and too expensive, and you'll likely lose interest in it way before you think you will... And if you plan on building Wittman's Tigr after the fight, well... That's a whole 'nudder can o' worms... Why don't you give us some dimensions that you're planning?  Sketch out your lay-out if you could..

Hans is right, Vector.  Unless you have something in mind that removes the problem of hundreds of scale yards of open space, I don't see how you can pull this off.  But, as Hans also said, throw out some general dimensions and ideas.  You'll get a ton of feedback.

bbrowniii wrote:

Mansteins revenge wrote: Manny, In the line drawing, what are the scale?  Those structures represented either side of the common grave - do you know what they are?  I tried to pick that up from the map, but couldn't really tell from the scan you posted. The description that he is relying on for this dio reference a wall that the Canadian tanks were in a 'chateau' grounds at Gaumesnil (the three structures in your image?) and had 'created firing holes in the property's wall', so I think this is where he is getting the idea that he needs to build some structures.  But, yeah, even that was about 150 yards away.

Mansteins revenge wrote:

Those structures are farm buildings for the huge field that the tanks were brewed up in...if you look at the lower left you can see an arrow pointig the way to the town he keeps referring to...it is so far away it is off of the diagram...still looking for that bird's-eye vew...my refs indicate that the Allied fire that knocked the tanks out came from the upper right from a tree-line that is not shown in the diagram because of distance...I believe that the Allied tanks may have been as far as 1,000 yards away...

Yeah, I figured that.  I'm just trying to averlay the line drawing to the map.  The roads seem to angle in different directions, but I know that map is in much smaller scale.  Looks to be the upper left of the map?  That arrow 'Gaumesnil'.

The scene Vector is interested in depicting is based on a new idea about who the actual killer of Wittman was.  The conventional idea has been as you describe from your refs, but apparently 'Histories Mysteries' recently did a show that gave credence to the idea that the killing shots actually came from some Canadian tanks hidden in those buildings.  Based on damage to the tank, the angle of the impact and other factors, the show concluded the 'conventional' history may have gotten this one wrong.  If you go to the Wikipedia page on Wittman, there is a brief discussion of this new hypothesis.  Pretty interesting actually.  If that is the case, the Sherman that fired on Wittman was only about 150 yards away when it took him on.  At that range, even a Sherman could knock out a Tiger...

To save you the trouble, here is that Wiki excerpt I mentioned:

"In fact, in late 2008 and again on March 9, 2009, the History Television channel in Canada broadcast an hour long investigation into the various claims of who fired the killing shot in the Wittmann affair. "Battlefield Mysteries," hosted by historian Norm Christie, examined the evidence in great detail and conclusively proved that it had to be a tank belonging to the Sherbrooke Fusiliers of the 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade. Using all of the evidence currently available, and working from the very field that Wittmann was killed in, Christie used global positioning hardware to measure the distances to almost the exact meter and found that the Northamptonshire Yeomanry's tanks were almost a full kilometer (970 meters) from Wittmann's Tiger tank, but had nevertheless killed three closer Tigers involved in the counterattack, corroborating Tout's and Ekins' account. However, Wittmann's tank, furthest from the Northamptonshire Yeomanry, was found to have been only 143 meters (a mere 469 feet) from the position of the Canadian Sherbrooke Fusiliers' Sherman Fireflies and that the Tiger had received the mortal wound in its left rear quadrant, its lightly armoured Achilles heel. It is impossible for the Northamptonshire Yeomanry to have fired a shot from the opposite direction and hit his tank from the side the Canadians were on. Indeed, they were a kilometer away and 180 degrees out of position, while the Canadian tanks were by far the closest to Wittmann's Tiger-dead meat for their Firefly's 17 pounder gun at such close range. Or even a regular Sherman's 75 mm gun, considering the closeness of Wittmann's Tiger and the thin armour in the position it was penetrated. Bearing in mind the fact that German eyewitnesses testified that Wittmann's gun was turned somewhat to the right before the turret blew off, and that the death blow arrived from his left, Wittmann and his crew likely never knew what killed them."