Just wanted to say that I am currently trying to become a volunteer guide in the Yad la Shiryon tank museum here in Israel, and the H39 ARTICLE IS HERE!!!
I know I know, it took way to long, but this is the only article where I can say with a 100% confidence there is absolutely no mistakes in it, at least none information-wise.
Shiryon Archive 
11 responses to “Writing update #6”
Nice article!
You do like your detail don’t you?
An interesting tale, I know very little about Israeli history, or it’s early wars so it is good to find out a little more. Plus, any mention of tanks always gets my attention.
Regards,
Frank
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Yup I am, when it comes to 1948 Israeli stuff theres a clear lack of details which I like even in good Hebrew sources, and if I dont bring ANY new information to the table when I publish and article, it was a waste of time writing it. Israeli history is very confusing, and the early wars (1948 and 1956) are not very well known in English, which is a shame, if you ever have any questions you can Email me anytime and I will answer to the best of my ability, also thanks for commenting Frank, it means the world to me 🙂
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Oh, and good luck with the Museum. I wish I lived a bit closer to the Bovington Tank Museum, I’d probably do something similar
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Thanks! they gave me a HUGE book to study, thankfully most of it is pretty basic stuff which I already know by heart, I did get into a small argument with one of the higher-ups of the museum about how many tanks we had in 1948, I wrote a letter in Hebrew explaining my argument which I will hand him physically next time we meet. Spoiler: its 15.
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I’ll be interested to hear how that goes!!
It’s amazing how often you get experts who maybe don’t know quite as much as they’re supposed to. But then I guess we can all be a bit like that at times
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I think its less so his fault, and more so bad historians of the past not trying to get a full real number just to emphasize the narrative of David Vs. Goliath of 1948, it is very much true that the Arab armies were generally more well equipped and much much larger, but I see it in many places where the number of Arab tanks or Israeli tanks is changed to better fit the narrative the author believes in, I hope to somewhat fix this in my website, I really can’t care less how the information I present impact the Israeli or Arab ego as long as its historically accurate. Also since the great historian Dr. Amiad Brezner passed away in 2012, there hasn’t been anyone who actually writes about 1948 Israeli armour in detail. Which again is a huge shame because its an incredibly fascinating and under-documented era, everything from Nazi self-propelled guns to pre-ww1 cannons were used on the same battles, its nuts! Maybe one day when I have more time and my photo collection expands I will write an actual book on the subject, but if it took Andrew Hills seven and a half years to write a book about the TOG alone it will take me a decade to write one on this.
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Well if you write it, I’ll read it.
I come across the same sort of thing in subjects I write about. Not so much historical bias, rather that someone writes something which is incorrect and then everyone else reads it and spouts the same error and it perpetuates until it becomes “fact”, even though it isn’t.
But then it may well be that I have unwittingly done the same, so I probably ought not to get too upset about it.
It is worth setting the record straight though, so the truth is out there, even if only a few people actually read it.
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Yea, the most recent well-known example of this I know of is when Historian Ed Francis (operator of the youtube channel Armoured Archives) uncovered a seventy year old mistake, he found that the diameter of the Churchill AVRE’s mortar is 230 mm and not 290 as many claim, he made a great video on it here:
I myself have found this mistake in an Israeli booklet from March 1953!
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A friend at “Despatches from fort Syllabub” was writing about this recently. The spigot diameter is 29mm, but clearly the warhead isn’t 29mm.
I’ve seen a Crusader labelled as a Covenanter in a book I have (to be fair there is a convenanter in the background in the photo). And a description of a T-62 with a picture of a T-55.
But a friend corrected me in a post just the other week, in service dates for a particular vehicle. I added SPGs to a battle, when they should have been towed guns. Corrected now, but oops!
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Photo mis-captions in books can be usually attributed to editor’s mistakes. Usually when I have questions about dates and such I head to discord, I dont know if your on it but Tank Encyclopedia’s discord server is great for asking questions like those
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I don’t use discord, or any of these new fangled social media things. My blog is my only online presence.
Anyway, I know where to go for info on Israeli tanks now 😁
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