Louis, sadly - yes, the US Army (thanks to Congress' mandate, I suppose) moved the Home of Armor from Ft. Knox to the Home of Infantry at Ft. Benning. This was done (according to the explanation) since the new "Combined Arms" involves Armor, Infantry, and I suppose eventually Artillery and everything else moving together so they can train together. On the surface, this is VERY true & needed, but I wonder what the head brass thinks the 4 Infantry Battalions, along with several,batteries of Artillery PLUS everything else was that was at Ft. Knox already was doing! I'm sure those grunts & gun bunnies feel appreciated since that's what they were doing (as long as I was in the Army, since 1978 and long before I arrived) with 5 1/2 years AT Ft. Knox! I suppose they could simply take over the State of Georgia and make it one big Army base where EVERY MOS (skill) is located.

Bah Humbug!

Yes, the Tiger at the Patton Museum was awesome as was the prototype of the STILL running Panther (PZKW 5) that they 'dusted off' each July 4th (the US Independence Day, for those of you NOT familiar with US Holidays) and used in the Memorial "battle" that was traditionally fought.

Sad ... very sad.

Complete sidebar, but I remember seeing this Uber-Beast there, too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T28_Super_Heavy_Tank

The T28 never saw combat (never had to), but can you imagine being on the receiving end of this thing?

Michel, you should've let us know you were in Kentucky!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris,_Kentucky

(Sorry, couldn't resist...)

That is great info on those tanks. What strikes me is how summary their end was. A few shots exchanged between armor, a lucky hit by the Americans, and the mighty Tiger is done for. No doubt many times it went the other way.

My Dad served as an "Armored Infantry" soldier in Korea. Sometimes he was an infantry grunt, while other times he served as a tank crewman. The very first tank he crewed in Korea was a later M-4 "Easy Eight" Sherman, and then later in Korea they had the M-26 Pershing's and M-46 Patton's. Dad told me that if you were in a Sherman and it was hit, you had merely seconds to get out before it would "brew up" as our English friends would say... He told me that he was warned about this by the "old hands" who served in Sherman's during WW2. His next statement was "... and they were right."

Dad later told me in his last weeks of life, that he was a crewman in 4 different tanks that were knocked out by the North Koreans or Chinese (using various methods) during the Korean "Police Action"...

One final interesting comment Dad said about the Sherman was this: "It was a decent tank as far as being reliable. We had problems with the M-26's at first. So the Sherman was the tank you wanted to be in if you wanted it to start and run... It would go in places where the larger and heavier M-26 would not. This was really important in the hills of Korea... where the "so called" dirt roads would wind around the mountains, and some had steep drop offs on the edges of the roads.", adding that he had seen where tanks had slid off the roads and ended up in the valleys below.

As a former US Army tanker myself, I could only imagine what these Sherman tankers were thinking when they rolled into combat. Especially when going against a Tiger...

Michel, your build is progressing wonderfully... I've been following it with great anticipation for the next installment... Thanks for posting the images above.

Jeff, they also moved most of the display items from the ordinance museum at APC South to Ft. Belvoir. Don't know if Anzio Annie (one of them German big railroad guns) is gone or not.
I'm sure the rationale is economy I don't get up there as much anymore, but it was nice to have some of the real thing to actually touch.

I also have a theory that the Afrika Korps used Italian and captured British colors, depending on what they had available. Give you a little wiggle room.

Great stuff, Bernie! This is the stuff of iModeler at its best: encouragement, networking, and theorizing. I love it.

And thanks for the pic, Michel! That pretty definitively proves that we're not talking Paris, Kentucky (which is horse country, by the way, and though rustic is nothing to sneeze at when it comes to rural beauty).

Here's my dad in Paris (France :-)), winter of 1945-46. He was a staffer for General John C.H. Lee, whose HQ was out of the George V Hotel. Someday I'll get there!

1 attached image. Click to enlarge.