The Mark V Panther was close, but not close enough for Ernest ‘Smokey’ Smith to fire his PIAT (Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank) into the beast’s hull. Pressed up against the side of the ditch beside his wounded comrade, ignoring the command car already out of action and two self-propelled guns (SPGs) being engaged elsewhere, he fumbled with the cumbersome 15kg weapon and waited for the right moment. The tank lurching towards him continued to spit rounds into the rain-sodden earth as it had when it struck the now-groaning Private James Tennant. But Smokey, a notoriously insubordinate soldier from the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada – having been promoted and demoted nine times – remained undeterred by the Germans’ 26th Panzer Division column in front of him. Finally, with the Panther about nine metres away, he stood in full view of the advancing enemy, aimed his shoulder-braced launcher and took his shot.
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Denne historien er fra Issue 116-utgaven av History of War.
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NAUMACHIA TRUTH BEHIND ROME'S GLADIATOR SEA BATTLES
In their quest for evermore novel and bloody entertainment, the Romans staged enormous naval fights on artificial lakes
OPERATION MANNA
In late April 1945, millions of Dutch civilians were starving as Nazi retribution for the failed Operation Market Garden cut off supplies. eet as In response, Allied bombers launched a risky mission to air-drop food
GASSING HITLER
Just a month before the end of WWI, the future Fuhrer was blinded by a British shell and invalided away from the frontline. Over a century later, has the artillery brigade that launched the fateful attack finally been identified?
SALAMANCA
After years of largely defensive campaigning, Lieutenant General Arthur Wellesley went on the offensive against a French invasion of Andalusia
HUMBERT 'ROCKY'VERSACE
Early in the Vietnam War, a dedicated US Special Forces officer defied his merciless Viet Cong captors and inspired his fellow POWs to survive
LEYTE 1944 SINKING THE RISING SUN
One of the more difficult island campaigns in WWII's Pacific Theatre saw a brutal months-long fight that exhausted Japan’s military strength
MAD DAWN
How technology transformed strategic thinking and military doctrine from the Cold War to the current day
BRUSHES WITH ARMAGEDDON
Humanity came close to self-annihilation with the Cuban Missile Crisis, Broken Arrows’ and other nuclear near misses
THE DEADLY RACE
How the road to peace led to an arms contest between the USA and USSR, with prototypes, proliferation and the world’s biggest bomb
THE MANHATTAN PROJECT
Einstein, Oppenheimer and the race to beat Hitler to the bomb. How a science project in the desert helped win a war
