Albeit a freebie with Audible (for a monthly subscriber) I found this book a really good listen. It went through the miscellaneous details of the unit organisation, the tank's technical capabilities, battalion and crew personnel structure and training, maintenance needs r rather foibles, plus the combat experience of a late war Tiger battalion. For the majority of its combat life Heavy Tank Battalion 507 fought on the Eastern Front - though in its deaths throws faced the Americans at Paderborn (see below, highly recommended as a casual read that gives you a flavour of the attractional nature of the Tigers demise, their Achilles heel was that they broke down through mechanical maintenance issues, unrecoverable for an army in retreat. They burned too, AT guns with flank shots and teh JS II's [and ISUs 122/152] were hated opponents or close range T34 duels):
The original source material came from Battalion 507 reunion conversations, that were collated and fact checked where possible. The material was of relatively current interest (for the Cold War that did not come in teh 1980/90s) to the US Army in the 1980s. So much so the information was presented to the US Armour School in West Germany (circa 1987) on the experiences in fighting the Soviets. It was noted with dark humour, that the reaction to the drubbing of an American Tank Company in 1945 [Paderborn] was greeted with some distaste and brushed aside as an ambush. The German historian pointed out to the Americans that they were guilty of very poor reconnaissance and the Germans responded to a planned American attack in the German rear with a level of professional agility that should be respected (and learned from).
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