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Ed. Thanks for sending your comments on our Command Decision article, “Second-Guessing Custer.” After traveling Custer’s exact route that fateful day more than a dozen times as part of the US Army Command and General Staff College’s staff ride – including trips to the Crow’s Nest to try to replicate what Custer and his scouts might actually have seen – and during which students get the chance to thoroughly study, examine and “second guess” the 7th’s commander “on the ground” where the regiment rode and fought (and within the context of what Custer likely knew), I observed many young Army majors having their preconceived notions of both Custer and the battle shattered. The article represents a general consensus of their opinions gleaned from these staff rides regarding the “Custer decisions.”

Sirs,

Regarding your January 2007 article "How they Fought, Marquis vs. a Tiger Tank", you show a Waffen-SS Tiger II in Normandy on July 14, 1944. Great set of pictures, but I hate to tell you that there were no SS Tiger IIs in Normandy at that time.

Wittmann’s old unit sSSPzAbt 101 was reequipped with Tiger IIs in September 1944 and renamed sSSPzAbt 501 and took part in the Ardennes offensive. The sSSPzAbt 102 was also reequipped about that time with Tiger IIs and renamed sSSPzAbt 502, and died in the ashes of Berlin. In October 1944 the sSSPzAbt 103 was reequipped with Tiger IIs and renumbered sSSPzAbt 503, and met their end East Prussia in May 1945. The Tiger battalions received 37 Tiger IIs.

For a good reference, I recommend Will Fey’s excellent "Armor Battles of the Waffen-SS" and "Weapons of the Waffen-SS" by Bruce Quarrie.

Most respectfully,
Steven J. Jennings

P.S. Please feel free to send any questions about the Waffen-SS my way.

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Ed. Thanks very much for sharing your “Tiger Tank” expertise with our readers. I imagine the American and British troops fighting in Normandy in June-August 1944 were glad they weren’t facing Tiger II’s!

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