I looking for a crew for my 1/35 Dragon Ersatz M-10 I have came down to:
Dragons US tank crew NW Europe:

or
Dragons 1944-45 german tank crew:

Witch one I should buy?

I have only seen one picture of a German with an Ersatz M10 and they were wearing German unifom.

Hi Tim

I'm by far an expert but I would be going for the US crew: it makes more sense that the Ersatz crew wore captured US uniforms to fool the enemy. From what I've read they also wore pink scarves to show German units that they weren't US crew. And to make it even more interesting you can replace the heads with Hornet heads wearing German head gear

Cheers (want to see your Ersatz M10 some day btw )

I guess it would depend on the time frame of your build.

The "Ez M-10" were only committed to battle as a normal armoured battalion so I'd guess the crews would have been back in German uniforms by then.

Prior to that, maybe in the build up to the operation, they may have been in US uniforms. Of course US uniforms were hard to come by some maybe the crews of a tank, that could remain out of sight, might have stayed in German uniforms.

A cool presentation might be to have only the commander in a US uniform and the others in German?

Or, the tank crew in German uniform, with an ersatz infantryman in mixed-up US uniform on board for a chat with the TC - complete with the pink scarf?

Tom

Certainly heaps of different possibilities with the subject, looking forward to what Tim comes up with.

The soldiers wearing US uniforms were all highly trained members of Skorzeny's commandos. They wore them to bluff there way through US lines. The ersatz M-10 was not designed to interact with US troops. After all, up close there was no way that it would fool US troops into thinking it was an American tank. Therefore there was no need to wear US uniforms, which also was going to get you shot if captured.

I guess interact with the US troops is a bit over reaching but they were designed to boldly drive through the confused lines and seize the bridges on the Meuse, that was why I was thinking that quite possibly one or two of the crew members might be in US uniform.

The Panthers of course were a stop gap measure the unit should have had a full compliment of captured US vehicles but they never got enough.

The wikki article makes interesting reading and makes it pretty clear the idea was to capture bridges by subterfuge. An interesting footnote is the acquittal of the people involved from breaking the rules about wearing enemy uniforms and brings into question the legality of the executions of some of the captured commandos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Greif