Sherman Firefly Vs Tiger: Normandy 1944 (Duel) [Paperback]

Considering that there are so few books on the Sherman Firefly I suppose it's churlish to complain when one does appear. The main problem is that while definitely worth buying, the book's pretty short. After a brief overview of the Firefly and Tiger it concentrates primarily on one engagement in Normandy, where German Tiger ace Michael Wittman's career came to a sudden end as his unit of Tigers blundered into an ambush by tanks of the 1st Northants Yeomanry and were knocked out by one Firefly gunner, trooper Joe Ekins (who like every other allied soldier serving during the war had never heard of Wittman). This the book portrays as THE definitive encounter between Tiger and Firefly, almost as an excuse for not bothering to cover any of the other encounters between the two types that took place during the war.

This naturally leaves the reader feeling a little short changed. For instance so far as this book is concerned 'Tiger' means 'Tiger 1' tanks - there's no mention of King Tigers, let alone how Fireflies fared when the two types clashed (head on, a Firefly's only chance was to attempt to ricochet a shell off the underside of the gun mantlet and down through the thinner armour of the hull roof - risky!!!). Secondly despite all the pics of Wittman there isn't a photo of Joe Ekins. More bizarrely, despite the in depth examination of the action (not to mention modern day photos of the battlefield from pretty much all angles) the only known photo of Wittman's wrecked Tiger isn't reproduced, even though it's freely available on Wikipedia. This in fact is very surprising as a section of the book does discuss other units' competing claims as the killers of Wittman (the book probably correctly comes down in favour of Joe Ekins detailed account of what actually happened).

Finally as a minor niggle there are several photos of 1NY tank crews featured, many of which are mentioned by name, but even though Ken Tout appears in several of the pics he's not mentioned - this is a bit surprising as he's written several books on the unit and also covered events that day. Considering that so far as I am aware no other member of 1NY who was there that day has written on the subject, it's surprising that this eyewitness' books aren't even mentioned in the bibliography.

The title of this book is misleading. It is not a straight comparison of the Firefly & the Tiger rather it's a study of how the Firefly defeated the Tiger. Don't get me wrong this is not a bad book and has some very usefull information but the author is obviously quite partisan about the Firefly and knowing a little on the subject already I think his view is a little blinkered. None the less not a bad book and I am not sorry I bought it I just wish it had been a little more balanced.

This book provides the usual technical details (armour thickness, speed of the machine etc) you would expect to find alongside information regarding the maintenance required, crew life and firing procedures etc

After giving several examples of excellent performances from each machine, for example relating the story of Otto Carius (over 150 victories) or Wilfred Harris (who destroyer 5 Panther tanks in one day) , the book then discusses in depth the German armoured counterattack during the initial phases of Operation Totalize - the main focus being the death of Michael Wittmann.

While Ashley Hart on the whole disagrees with Brian Reid on how Wittmann was killed he does provide an excellent insight on what happened and favours the famous Joe Ekins as being his killer. It would have been great to see the same level of detail used to cover this counterattack on other examples of the Tiger and Firefly engaging one another throughout the North West Europe Campaign and possibly Italy.

Regardless of the book being a bit on the short side there is allot of excellent information crammed into it and the plates, which support this text, are amazing!