The Waldemar Trojca books are a series of World War Two reference books that include a good selection of large, clear reference photos. The most common are of various types of armour and this particular one one covers the Sd.Kfz 166 Sturmpanzer “Brummbar” or Sturmpanzer 43, an infantry support gun that mounted a modified SIG33 150mm howitzer onto a Pz.Kpfw IV chassis, and looked a bit like a somewhat overweight StuH 42.
This book is broken down into several sections that include a vehicle history, unit organisational charts, wartime photos, museum photos of a preserved vehicle and a series of colour plates and line diagrams.
The three pages of history are quite intensive to read for those of us who don’t like small print and compacted paragraphs, but it covers the important points well. These are followed by a two page line drawing spread showing unit organisation of these vehicles.
The thirty three pages of wartime photos are predominantly large clear photos that show the vehicle well, though some of the photos which have obviously been enlarged from smaller photos are a bit blurry and lack the pixilisation clean-up some similar publications. These do not have descriptions on the actual page but rather are numbered with the descriptions on two index pages before the photo section begins. I did find this method to be a bit of a pain with the constant flicking back and forth.
The thirteen pages ( including the inside front and inside back cover ) of museum photos of an early model Brummbar in the Russian Kubinka Museum are the most useful, providing a lot of good close detail photos, including a few interior views, though not as many as I would have liked as there are none of the driver’s area and only one not very useful one of the breech.
The photos are followed by eight pages of colour plates and concludes with twenty five pages of 1:35 scale line drawings of different versions and various parts of the vehicle. While I found one or two of these to be useful I do have to question their usefullness overall as they do collectively comprise around 40% of the book once you add in the two index pages for them.
Overall it’s a very useful reference book for the Sd.Kfz. 166 Sturmpanzer, though I do sort of feel that it’s a bit padded out.
Author : Waldemar Trojca
Publisher : J.J. Fedorowicz Publishing Pages : 88 containing both B&W and Colour Photos Binding : Softcover Size : 212mm x 300mm ISBN : 0-921991-64-9
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