Occassionally it pops up in the forums that the commonly published impression that Sherman tanks were more prone to "brewing up" when hit actually meant that other tanks didn't suffer the same fate to a similar degree, thus the misconception that the "ronson" should do so in the game more than it does.

There are two important things to remember:

1. Shermans in the game do flame up a lot.

2. German tanks like the PzKw.III and PzKw.IV, and probably even more so the PzKw.V (which is not yet modeled in the game) also suffered a similar rate of "flame jobs" when hit by penetrating anti-tank munitions. When pulling wartime records and statistics of armoured formations, including German ones, it becomes clear that the German armoured divisions had their "jerry cookers" in very similar rate of incidence as the Allies had their "tommy cookers".

We as a rule, esspecially here in the Western Hemisphere, are "Allied" people in the historical sense. Most of the material we read about and that is published is from the "Aliied" perspective. This leads to a generalized exposure to issues that faced the "Allies" much more so than the "Axis" or in this case, German forces. Material published as a part of generalized points of view such as are seen on the History Channel, "wartime" websites and the websites of "Allied" individuals (whose family backround is slanted to exposure to British Commonwealth and American experiences in historical records) deals a lot with "Allied experiences and hardships" much more so than theexperiences of those on the other side of the conflict. Records are easier to access from the Allied side of the experience and often they are also inaccurate. Last night on the History Channel I heard the Me-262 jet fighter was armed with 4 x 20mm cannons, when in fact they were never armed as such, it had 4 x 30mm cannons. 1 very rare version had 2 extra 20mm cannons in additio to the 4 x 30mm, but almost none of these were completed or saw service.

Anyway, the real point is to beware of common opinion if it might be less well informed by thorough research, as is often the case in forum land.

German tankers had as much to fear in general, from fire being their probable cause of death as any Allied Sherman tank crew did, esspecially with the more common tanks that were used in the Western theatre of conflict. Tigers might have fared better in this respect but most tanks employed by the German army were not Tiger tanks. Tigers were actually rather rare when compared to the numbers of other types of tanks employed by the German army during the war. The best tank (with regard to not catching fire) was statistically the British Churchill type; and the later model Shermans (surprise surprise !) which had wet storage for their ammunition bins.

So get your tanking on and see you in the game for some more good times!