Miscaptioned period pics in reference books

How about the so called historical war documentaries,they will be describing a battle say Midway,Stalingrad,the Bulge,anything,and at the same time they throw any stock footage up on the screen that they have from a totally different battle,which is pretty obvious.

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Adolf Hitler supervises the loading of torpedoes into a U-Boot, Feb, 1943.

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Gee, I wonder if you’ve seen the Rants About Reviews thread.

Clearly you have an understanding of human nature, whereas as some do not…

I think something else that lends itself to the discussion is the internet and the vast resources from archives and collections of primary sources that are available now whereas, for instance, the Squadron books where researched from other works and what archives the authors might have been able to locate. For my senior thesis at college on B-17’s, strategic bombing and tactics I ended up buying microfilm rolls from Maxwell AFB that at the time held the USAF archives. Once I got those several months later it was hours upon hours of scanning thru the film, printing out doc’s, sorting, correlating and assembling that picture into my overall puzzle with all the published books I used as 2ndary sources. Even using that big pool I found differences between official and related figures on losses and aircrew fatalities! And this was 40 years plus after the fact. Nowadays a researcher has an even wider array of archives to pour through. For instance it was tough for me to locate anything published outside the US, now a days it’s a search engine. So I do give a benefit of the doubt to anything published prior to the 2000’s. One other big item to note on alot of WW2 European information is the vast pool of documents that opened up after the iron curtain fell. And final alot or archives spent years converting paper to digital which many take for granted but was a huge undertaking that allows us the luxury of wondering wtf is going on sometimes in newer published works when we know the vast amount available to fact check if one knows where to look. I’m not familiar with the series that kicked off the discussion, I will say for a dated series that I’ve found pretty accurate it’s hard to beat that old Time life series on WW2, my home state has an abundance of used book stores (cold long winters and it gets dark early so might as well read a good book I suppose) so I’ve decided for a few bucks each on the average to start collecting them, for nothing more than nostalgia since these were some of the first WW2 books ii remember reading from the school library in the early 80’s.

There are many times I hate the internet but from a research point of view it’s been a godsend to historically oriented activities.

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In one of my books, I remember seeing a picture of a German 88mm Flak 37 that had been destroyed while being towed. The caption under the photograph refers to it as a German self-propelled gun.

Well…there are wheels …so…:confused:

Thanks,
Randy

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So, where can I get a copy of the corrections? That information would be very useful. Thanks!

Swedish television called this a tank:
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They were reporting about some unrest in some East European country

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Yes, Baxter and co are well known for their lack of accuracy in captions. And yes, with their latest publications there really is no excuse, but as mentioned, older publications often suffered due to a lack of information we now have - especially since Russia let the cat out of the bag on what they had captured during the war and still have.

Examples:

The old “Encyclopaedia of German Tanks of World War Two” by Perter Chamberlain and Hiliary Louis Doyle mentions the Maus as never having been progressed past paper plans.

Even the well regarded Panzertracts has some incorrect information in older issues. Hilary Doyle’s illustrations of the SDKFZ 260 looked like this in PT 13 (illustration dated 1983)
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and this in PT 13-1 (illustration dated 2011)
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Many, many differences after more photographs came to light in the intervening years.

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Reading books is the same as looking at museum vehicles - often what you see is fabricated to make the result look good…

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Welcome Steve, I’ve sent you a p.m. (click on your icon top right, then the green disc) :tumbler_glass:

I do believe the Hetzer in Ambush could be an reenactment picture. How do i know ?

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background info?

You may be right…If you do an image search for “hetzer reenactors” (b&w) this picture is one of the first to pop up…

Image search results

The mannequin in the background is also a tell tale…

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The FJ guy is me and hetzer is the prevalent axis armour present on most events, given that the czech and swiss versions were used after the war and then went to storage. Also those guys in the picture arent 100% correct. And also they are kinda old and fat.

One of Mr Baxter’s latest Images of War - The Waffen SS at Arnhem contains a very serious mistake (among several others). Leaving aside bad captions and misidentified vehicles, here’s what it says on P99:

SS- Brigadefurher Heinz Harmel (it’s not) confers with the commander, Stanislaw Sosabowski (it’s not him either), of the 1st Independent Polish Parachute Brigade following its capture (this REALLY did not happen!). During the operation, the brigade supported the British paratroopers at Oosterbeek (true, some of the Poles did actually cross the river into the British perimeter). However, during the intense fighting that ensued, by 26th September the brigade had lost 25 per cent of its fighting strength, amounting to 590 casualties (this may be true, Sosabowskis men did have a lot of hard fighting south of the Rhine). To avert more casualties it reluctantly surrendered (NO IT DID NOT! The Poles continued to hold south of the Rhine, it was only due to their actions that 30 Corps was able to make contact and arrange the withdrawal of 1st British Airborne. What the photo actually shows is two unnamed officers, one German one Polish, one of those who crossed into the perimeter.).

“background info”
referred to these parts of the image:
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and
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The info embedded in the background gives it away

I was once flickering through a history textbook whilst the teacher was waffling about homework and came across a colourised picture of an M24 Chaffee labelled as a StuG. 14 year old me was speechless

Did it give you a sceptical attitude to the rest of the content of that book?

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It happens in aircraft books as well - this from a hardback
book on the Zero purchased long ago - caption misidentified a Hayabusa as a Zero . I haven’t opened this book in fifteen years or more and this thread instantly brought this to mind .

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At least the Zero and Hayabusa have something of a passing resemblance to one another, and the same ID mistake was often made by Allied pilots. But I often find those Pen & Sword books chock full of photo caption errors of the worst type. One stands out in my mind regarding North Africa where a group of Italian M13/40s or M14/41s, one of the most numerous types used by the Axis, was identified as Czech built Panzer 35Ts, which never served in Africa.