Talk:Michael Wittmann

message: Wasn't Wittmann's last unit schwere SS-Panzerabteilung 101 rather than Leibstandarte?
LV 20:36, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Untitled 

message: Am afraid people that all the WW2 propaganda is not true, Kurt Knispel nailed over 160 tanks.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by EnigmaMcmxc (talk • contribs) 22:01, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wittmann was not the top scoring German tank ace 

message: "Together with Johannes Bölter, Otto Carius and Kurt Knispel (the top scoring German panzer ace of the war with 168 confirmed tank kills) he is considered to be one of the greatest tank commanders in history.
" Considered by whom? Who says these three are the greatest, and what would it mean to say "greatest" anyway? DMorpheus (talk) 19:23, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: What exactlly is the problem and what is the issue with the point of view?  Other people who wrote the articles on the other tank commanders used that phrasing and it seems approiate to carry it on in this article.
These four men, in order ranking:
Kurt Knispel: 168 confirmed victories, may be as high as 190+
Otto Carius: In the 150 area
Johannes Bolter: 139 confirmed victories, may be as high as the 140s
Michael Wittmann: 138 confirmed victories (although one questions if that is excluding the 27 tanks the propaganda states he destroyed at Villers-Bocage
Are the top scoring tankers from all sides during World War Two and there socres have since been rivled, in all likelyhood they will never be.  So what makes them the "greatest" i would assume achieving that type of score in the worlds worst conflict.
I honestly dont see the problem here, when other writers stated simlar in there articles for the other tankers no one brought up any issues and i think this is nitpicking tbh.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by EnigmaMcmxc (talk • contribs) 20:40, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  The problem is that this sentence expresses a judgment without citing a source. We don't know, from the information given, who considers these guys to be the greatest tank commanders ever or what it means to be the "greatest". It is easy to envision many possible criteria. Without some published source cited here this is mere opinion/original research. I can post that Corporal Joe Tentpeg was the greatest tank commander of all time and it would be no less weak a statement. The fact that similar text appears in other articles is all the more reason to fix it. Regards, DMorpheus (talk) 20:58, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

text:  Those are interesting opinions - but that is all. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a soapbox. Find a published source that provides a ranking of tank commanders and we're all set. Without that all you have is OR. Regards, DMorpheus (talk) 19:47, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  It's not POV, there are published RS sources that establish how many tank kills they achieved. The Panzer ace page has a ranking, referenced to RS. Deathlibrarian (talk) 12:52, 4 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV ?

message: Article reassessed and graded as start class. --dashiellx (talk) 01:26, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Tag & Assess 2008 

message: The one thing that seems to be missing from the section on the discussion of Michael Wittmann's death is detailed testemony from Joe Ekins. The Canadians filmed him briefly two years ago but he feels that as his testemony did not suit the editiorial line of their programme, by Canadians for a pedominantly North American market, it was ignored (sorry chaps!). As a result, he has given a 3 hour plus interview on film to Battlefield History TV and has worked with us to clear up a number of issues; not least where his fire position was, what he shot at and where it was.
This will all come out in a programme shortly but here are just a few of the facts he revealed:
Joe was in the southern tip of the Orchard where the track left the Orchard (very clear on a contermpoary map) making the range much less than the 1200 yards quoted. The first tank to his left brewed. His second target, in the centre of his arc, was swinging towards him and exploded - there is only one wreck meets that description. His third target was to his right and was either Tiger 312 or 009. These pair were within range of the remainder of A Sqn 1 NY and 144 Regt RAC which was to the north (they originally claimed a Tiger).
The air engagement has I believe been comprehensively debagged, as double checking reveals no sorties being recorded or reported over the area as an air control measure was in place to prevent air blue on blue contacts and if you think about it which fighter bomber pilot is going to fly into a USAF heavy bomber strike!!? The bombers afterall managed to hit the Canadians RHQ north of Jalousie. How do we account for the rockets? Even though the front moved on the air effort continued to be applied with a big hand and it is by no means unusual for wrecks to be engaed by one and all. Even in these modern times I recall an 'excitement' in Iraq in 2003 when the British Paras clained to have knocked out an Iraq tank in an area that was thought to have been cleared. after much 'concerned rushing around' it was discovered that it had been knocked out three days earlier by the UK Army Air Corps! Also a quick look at the picture shows that the wound in the Tiger is an exit wound and was most likely th result of something coming from insde the tank not penetrative.
The position of the tanks as we know them is not exact as the tracks sections were scavenged for use as aplique armour.  Thiswould involve moving the tanks upto 20 metres.
Tim Saunders  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Battlefield History TV (talk • contribs) 00:59, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the shooting location of his tank as been known for quite some time, both Stephen Ashley Hart (supporting Ekins as the killer) and Brian Reid (supporting the Canadian Regiment) have published maps identifying his location - so its not really a secret ;)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.4.87.120 (talk) 01:58, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Joe Ekins Testimony 

message: Why is that particular picture being used as the lead or header photo? There is the much more attractive one that is recognized around the world, that is the group taken by a professional photographer a month before his death. Which just happens to be in the Wikicommons copyright free.
Just because your vanquished doesn't mean you have to be remembered ugly! (Could someone do the honors please?)--Oracleofottawa (talk) 03:18, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Article Lead Picture

message: Iv'e noticed in parts the date is ordered mm/dd/yy I know this is popular in America but should it be used here? the order dd/mm/yy is by far the most popular (source wikipedia) especialy in Europe where these events took place.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Owain meurig (talk • contribs) 22:35, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Please see WP:DATESNO guideline. --ElComandanteChe (talk) 17:07, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  DATE ORDERING 

message: Mostly in the article it says 8 August. However, in the Schneider quotation (which appears just before the Death section header) it says 9 August. Is this just a mistake, or is it wrong in the source (and so maybe needs a "sic" here?) or is it disputed, or what? Or maybe I am just confused - it wouldn't be the first time. :) Best wishes DBaK (talk) 08:48, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Nice fix, thank you. DBaK (talk) 14:55, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Date of death 

message: Because we have some personal stuff, then his military career in chronological order with some discussion, then a bit more personal stuff, poor Wittmann seems to get married after he's been buried, reinterred etc. It might just be me but I find that this reads a little oddly. Whilst I can see exactly how it got like this - it all makes perfect sense from one view -  I am not sure if it can/should elegantly be fixed to avoid the awkwardness. Or maybe it doesn't matter too much? ... what do you think? Cheers DBaK (talk) 08:52, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article order 

message: For an article on one of the more successful German tank commanders of the war, there is a lot of time spent on trying to figure out who killed him and how.  The article has 10.4 kilobytes of prose on his death, in contrast to 10.5 kilobytes of text on his career, of which 1.5 kilobytes is devoted to Wolfgang Schneider claiming Wittmann was a dunce of a company commander.  Is there such tripping over one another if the person killed fought for the Allies?  Maurice Rose was a divisional commander who got into an area occupied by the Germans and managed to get himself shot while trying to escape.  Okay.  So is there paragraphs spent trying to figure out who was the actual trigger man in the killing of the highest ranking officer killed by enemy fire in the ETO?  No. His  article explains what happened and moves on.  Perhaps this article should endeavor to do the same, and edit down the section on "Who gets the credit for the killing of Michael Wittmann?" As it stands it seems rather unseemly.  Also a lot happened with Wittmann while fighting in the east.  The article doesn't say much about it - just numbers and so forth.  This portion could be expanded. Just a couple of thoughts.Gunbirddriver (talk) 22:03, 9 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unseemly 

message: Agte is not a WP:RS source, as has been discussed on Jochen Peiper's article. Please see that article's Talk page. I will remove the material that would not be considered compliant with WP:MILMOS. K.e.coffman (talk) 04:25, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Agte 

message: finally got around to it. How about below? 
Speculation surrounding death
thumb|right|150px|Grave of Michael Wittmann with the crew of Tiger 007, La Cambe Cemetery, France.
The historian Stephen Hart comments "the Wittmann legend [has] become well-established" and "continues to stimulate huge public interest." Thus, an unusual amount of speculation, for such a junior officer, has surrounded his death, both as to its cause and the party responsible. Wittmann became a cult figure after the war, with several websites and books dedicated to him, such as by authours Patrick Agte and Franz Kurowski. Agte states that "the English" could have possibly placed a bounty on Wittmann, which is contradicted by the Allied records and the fact that, according to the testimony of the Allied troops involved, he was not singled out during the battle. 
Contemporaneous Nazi propaganda reports contended that Allied aircraft struck Witmann's tank, stating that he had fallen in combat to the "dreaded fighter-bombers". In a post-war account, the French civilian Serge Varin, who took the only known photograph of the destroyed tank, claimed that he found an unexploded rocket nearby and that that he saw no other penetration holes in the tank. The historian Brian Reid dismisses this contention as the relevant RAF logs make no claim of engaging tanks in the area at that time. This position is supported by the men of Wittmann’s unit who stated they did not come under air attack, and British and Canadian tank crews who also dismiss that aircraft helped halt the German attack. 
Following the war, claims were made by or for the following units as being the ones responsible: 1st Polish Armoured Division, the 4th Canadian Armoured Division, the 144th Regiment Royal Armoured Corps and the RAF Second Tactical Air Force. Reid has examined these various claims and dismissed them based on the war diaries of these units.
In a 1985 issue of After the Battle Magazine, Les Taylor – a member of the 1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry during the war – claimed that fellow yeoman Joe Ekins was responsible for the destruction of Wittmann's tank. Veteran and historian Ken Tout, a member of the same unit, published a similar account crediting Ekins. Historians have supported this position, and it became the widely accepted version of events. Hart provides additional details stating that Ekin's unit was positioned in a wood on the right flank of the advancing Tiger tanks. At approximately 12:47, they engaged them halting the attack and killing Wittmann. 
Reid discusses the possibility that the A Squadron of the Sherbrooke Fusilier Regiment, 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade, positioned on left flank of the advancing German tanks, was responsible instead. Situated on the grounds of a chateau at Gaumesnil, the unit had created firing holes in the property’s walls and, based on verbal testimony, engaged the advancing German tanks, including Tigers. The British tanks were between  and  away from the German line of advance, whereas the Canadian squadron was around  away. Reid argues that due to the latter's proximity to the Germans and the firing angle, the Canadian troops more than likely can be credited with the destruction of Wittmann's tank.
:I will go ahead and implement these changes. Improvements welcome. K.e.coffman (talk) 23:21, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Draft

message: K.e.coffman (talk) 21:16, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Notes

message: The article states that Wittmann's nickname was "The Black Baron". There are even a redirect and a disambiguation. That nickname seems extremely unlikely to me, to say the least. First, Wittmann was not a baron. Second, it seems to be an allusion to Manfred von Richthofen, whom the British, but only the British, had nicknamed "Red Baron". As Joachim Castan noted in his recent biography of Richthofen, the French called him "Rouge diable" (Red devil) or "le petit rouge" (the small red), while the Germans spoke of Richthofen as "der rote Kampfflieger" (the red fighting pilot). It was only after 1945 that "roter Baron" became common in Germany as well. So it does not make sense to assume, that Wittmann was nicknamed "schwarzer Baron" by the Germans. Brian Reid, however, who is referenced for the nickname, observes that the Allies knew virtually nothing about Wittmann and his celebrity status, that Wittmann had not acquired the status of Manfred von Richthofen and that his Tiger tank was not to be distinguished from other Tigers. I haven't accessed the 2005 edition of Reid's work, but so far I have seen nothing which supports the existence of such a nickname, save a somewhat careless image caption by Reid. --Assayer (talk) 17:07, 14 October 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: This seems dubious to me; I will remove. K.e.coffman (talk) 06:31, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Google does not have anything of substance and this is what Google books shows: "The Black Baron: The Strange Life of Gilles de Rais". Kierzek (talk) 21:59, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  "The Black Baron" 

message: In 2008, investigative historical series Battlefield Mysteries, hosted by Norm Christie surveyed the area in episode 1 "Who killed Michael Wittman?"  The episode noted that the distance from the Canadian position was not only closer to the final position of Wittman's tank, Tiger 007, than previously thought at approximately 143 meters (164 Yards) away, but also matched damage from Tiger 007 to the side facing the Sherbrooke Fusiliers as being most likely from a round fired by them and not from either the Ekins who was almost a kilometer away or the RAF rockets which would have caused different damage to the hull of Tiger 007. 
As the addition was undone, how can we integrate this better into the Death Controversy section? I thought it was a good addition that cited a specific episode of a specific show that could be easily located and watched. At the time of the original edit, YouTube had the episode available.
Daryl Morning (talk) 04:40, 20 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Integration of Documentary information 

message: Jesus, just looking at this, this article is Not neutral at all. The section on assessment seems to be 100% critical of him, despite the fact he is by most people, and many writers, as the world's greatest tanks ace! Deathlibrarian (talk) 04:11, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I would suggest stop reading Agte et el. Currently used in the article are leading experts on World War II armoured warfare, professional historians, and tank experts (i.e. Schneider) rather than "most people" (who, if the German tank figures are to be believed, have obviously never heard of Kurt Knispel) and "many writers" (so not professional historians and subject experts?). By all means, please provide a RS that provides a counter opinion.EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 22:10, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

text: If it's any consolation, most articles about Nazi Germany's fighter/tank aces have always read like hagiographies. What you're noticing is that the world has started to change, and now these men are starting to be seen as the instruments of genocidal destruction they always were, plus some of the Cold War propaganda romanticizing these men has been torn apart. The andf (talk) 00:33, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

text: I agree, the pages on panzer aces being edited citing that the historians added are biased but then using prominently a historian that is highly biased towards the allied side like Steven Zaloga is, makes all these articles non-compliant with NPOV.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:8109:1A3F:C906:5635:E185:4293:C4C0 (talk) 13:41, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree, I pro German source like Kurowski is heaped on (and I agree he is), but a pro American source like Zaloga is accepted as gospel, This isn't how Wikipedia works, it's is supposed to have a balanced view, not a pro US view. Deathlibrarian (talk) 02:52, 5 November 2023 (UTC)
replies: text:  The Kurowski books are discounted not because they are "pro German", but because they are unreliable. See the Franz Kurowski article, and especially: Franz_Kurowski#Authenticity_and_accuracy. --K.e.coffman (talk) 23:34, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV 

message: I'm re-reverting the statement "Long after, yeoman gunner Joe Ekins shooting from a Sherman Firefly was credited", sourced to an obituary in The Telegraph for the following reasons:
* I fail to see how an obituary in a newspaper can be an authoratative source on this subject;
* The obituary does not definitively support the statement that Ekins was credited with the kill to the exclusion of competing claims. It says rather that "It was later claimed [that Ekins] had brought about the death of...Wittman" and that "Several other units were the subject of similar claims...". It does state "The claim that he fired the shot that killed Wittmann has been reinforced by recent research...", but this seems to me to fall short of definitive confirmation that it was he and not someone else who fired the killing shot, and then goes on to cast doubt again by reporting "Nor did [Ekins] express any regrets about killing Wittmann, if indeed he had done so...";
* If there is indeed recent research that sheds more light on this matter, it is that research (whatever it is, the obituary does not elaborate) that would be the appropriate source;
* There is an entire section in the article dealing with the speculation surrounding Wittman's death, which also discusses Ekins part in Wittman's death.
As a point of interest, that section, referring to the claim that Ekins was responsible for Wittman's death, sources the statement that "Historians have supported this position, and it became the widely accepted version of events" to p. 414 of Reid's No Holding Back: Operation Totalize, Normandy, August 1944. I'm curious to know what exactly Reid says on that page (Gbooks preview won't show me), because according to the index, Ekins is not mentioned there. Is Reid reporting historians' views on Ekins specifically, or on the unit? Reid himself clearly favours an alternative version in which the Canadians are credited with the kill, as the last para in that section shows. Factotem (talk) 16:20, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I also don't see how a Telegraph obituary is good enough as a source for this. The one that the Telegraph vaguely alludes to might be appropriate, if it can be found. (Hohum @) 16:34, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

text: *Hohum, seriously? "The Telegraph is widely regarded as a national "newspaper of record" and it maintains an international reputation for quality, having been described by the BBC as being "one of the world's great titles"." For a newspaper, you can't get much better than that. Drmies (talk) 17:52, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Correct or not, the Telegraph is RS. And the Northants Yeomanry's claims for three Tigers destroyed by Ekins' Firefly (and one of those Tigers exploded, and the only one that exploded is now known to have been Wittmann's) rest on their war diary, kept in the HQ tank at the time. The Sherbrooke Fusiliers lost their war diary that day, so anything the Canadians say is just 'war stories down the pub,' as it were. We don't know that the Sherbrookes were even in position at the right time. There was action in the area later that day, involving Panzer IVs, which Allied troops almost invariably mistook for Tigers. The article suggests that the Sherbrookes engaged the 'Tigers' in flank at over 500 yards. In that case, according to the table in Ellis, Victory in the West Vol.I, pp.548-9, a 75mm-gunned Sherman could not penetrate a Tiger's side armour. The armour was 80mm thick. The standard Sherman's 75mm gun had a maximum penetration of 68mm at 30 degrees at 500 yards. Only a Firefly (with 140mm penetration at 500yd) could kill a Tiger side-on at that range, but the Sherbrookes have never attributed the kill to their Firefly, which would be a known tank with a known crew. There have been claims that the range from the supposed Canadian position was only 150yd, but a 75mm-gunned Sherman would be unlikely to kill a Tiger side-on even in those circumstances. (Maximum penetration 74mm at 100yd, which, in the argot of tank-v-tank discussion, means 'gun fails point blank.') Unless the Canadians can name the individual Firefly and its crew, and show solid timings, and produce the crew's firsthand accounts, their claim is void and the destruction of this insignificant Nazi's tank must be credited to Joe Ekins of the Northants. Khamba Tendal (talk) 18:28, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Crediting Ekins with Wittman's death 

message: I tried twice to fix the photo of Wittmann's grave. Each time, the Show Preview shows the image clearly, but after Publish Changes, the photo does not appear. I give up. Djmaschek (talk) 04:36, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Photo problems