Good morning. First post here, never even lurked. 44 yrs old, modelling since 68 or so- never too seriously. I want to do a diorama featuring some specific vehicles in a fairly specific scene, but I'm not sure they were ever in the same general area & time frame. As the title suggests, I'm envisioning a late '44 Stug(I have a Tamiya Mk III if that would not be totally inaccurate)hiding under a bridge on which a U.S. tank or tank destroyer or(please no flames)M8 gun motor carriage trundles through, loaded w/ foot soldiers, unaware of the danger below. My question is where might I begin w/research into this little project? Thanks in advance.

The PZ III gun tank would be unlikely. There are some recovery PZ III's shown in Bulge pictures. The Stug III would be the better choice. All the US vehicles that you mention were there as they were common in all units. Even the M8 GMC soldiered on to the end.

As for reference, there is a huge amount of material on the Bulge. If your wallet can handle it, and you can find it, get the big book on the Bulge from After the Battle, The Battle of the Bulge Then and Now. Concord also has a feature book on the Bulge, I can't find it so no number. The Concord books on the ETO usually have a short feature on the Bulge, M4 Sherman at War, #7001, The Sherman at War #2, #7036. US Tank Battle in France, #7050 while not the Bulge, shows similar conditions. For the books, try your LHC, or some of the online shops and Google the Bulge.

Good luck with the project.

Steve, you can research on "The Battle Of The Bulge" or "The Ardennes Offensive." They are the same thing, and your timeframe for that will begin August or September 1944. Wikipedia has some fairly good information available, with links to outside sources. If you're interested, you're welcome to join our Borders Of The Fatherland '44-'45 campaign. This will fit right in with what we're intending to accomplish. Even if you don't join our campaign, you're still welcome to ask us all questions, and while we may not necessarily have the answers, I think most of us will still try.
Lewis

Hi Steve, welcome here
Here's some sites that can help as well:
http://forum.axishistory.com/
http://www.bild.bundesarchiv.de/
Merry Christmas!
Regards, Ed

Steve, sounds like a good idea that would fit the campaign shown below very well as Lewis has already pointed out.

I would also go for a StuG III in one of the long gun versions for your diorama.

There were some StuG IIIs with short guns around untill the end of WWII, but very few. There were also some Pz. III tanks around, but I have only seen pictures of those on the Eastern front by this time of the war.

Looking forward to see more in the future