Folks need to learn about Kurt Knispel so they can find out about other Tigers, too. He was in the 501, non SS and that is probably why he didn't get laurels in the state run news. He would not join the SS. Whittmann had a tanker under him, Otto Blasé who was training to become a Luftwaffe pilot when he was "drafted" into the SS to become a tank commander. His tank, but not him, was also knocked out in the engagement that killed Whittmann and went on to become the Tiger B commander who's Tiger was captured during the Battle of the Bulge and is now at the Fort Benning Infantry museum. In a correspondence I had with a well know author about Blase's life after he lost his tank, the author told me that no one who attended the SS reunions after the war that he talked to had seen anything of Blasé after his tank was captured, so he may have made it through the war but not attended reunions because he was not SS at heart, or that he died, or that he may have emigrated after the war, possibly to Wisconsin in the US. That's where a lot of former German soldiers and SS who got out of Germany went. And there is a possibility that he stayed in Germany and became a Lutheran Minister, dying early this century.
But Kurt Knispel is THE top "ace" of tanks in Germany, maybe in the world.
