Highly engrossing account of the 3rd Armored Division during World War II, written from the perspective of a junior officer that worked in the part of the division responsible for recovering damaged and destroyed vehicles, and also responsible for fixing damaged vehicles -- and later, training replacement crews. There's a great deal of interesting commentary about the strengths and weaknesses of the Sherman tank, especially the weaknesses, that tend to get glossed over in accounts of the time. A small weakness of the book is the crudity of the maps ("Baston," really?) ( )

Death Traps, Belton Y. Cooper, 1998, Presidio Press, 346pp, photos. ISBN0 89141 814 8

I really don't know where to start.

I first read this book about 18 years and I must say my low opinion of it has not changed. It is presented early on as a scholarly work, as Cooper goes to great lengths to pronounce his credentials as a combat soldier who was educated at VMI and received various training courses specific to armored warfare and tank maintenance. note: He was a 2nd Lt serving as a maintenance liaison officer with the 3rd Armored Division in the NW European Campaign. I cannot concede that is the work of a scholar in that there are no foot or end notes, no references, and no real indication that many of his broad pronouncements are more than personal opinion.

Had Cooper stuck to his personal memories and couched his "analysis" of the pros and cons of the M4 as his alone, then I could consider this book in higher regard, in spite of his editorializing and poor authorship. I have my suspicions that he wrote down his memories randomly and they were molded into book form by a ghost writer, who then added his 2 cent's worth. Cooper tended to repeat himself often. The reader was told at least 6 times that the 2nd & 3rd ADs were only heavy armored division in the US. But that was not enough. Each time, he had to include the actual numbers of tanks and other vehicles. Each. Time. There were other examples of needless repetitions of facts or opinions, almost word for word scattered throughout. He repeated the 3 or 4 paragraph story Col Joh Madaris, almost word for word in consecutive chapters, ten pages apart.

He had a tendency, I felt, to relate stories he had heard about, but was not actually a witness to and gave no attribution to its origin. This seemed to be regular occurrence.

His "analysis" of the M4, as mentioned voraciously throughout the book was slanted at best and he included no references anywhere for any of the historical discussion by senior leadership he claimed to have occurred and certainly was not a party to. He included Patton in decision-making discussion that he was not involved in and I suspect he conflated his later personal reading with his actual wartime personal involvement. He would enumerate losses of US armor during attack and then compare the weapons and armor of the opposing tank forces, then on later pages, talk about the tanks facing anti-tank and hand-held anti-tank weapons. This suggested to me that, while US tank losses were high, they were not lost during tank to tank combat, which the focus of his book. Also, apparently the only heavy German tank the US forces faced was the Tiger II, as he referred to the Tiger throughout the book as the "King Tiger".

There were other historical errors throughout. One example is claiming the 2nd Panzer Division SS was defeated at Celles, when it was the 2nd Panzer Division of the Heer. I am sure he was proud of his division-any other soldier would have been. Yet, he tended to downplay the actions of other formations and make it appear as though the 3rd Armored conducted certain operations in a vacuum, particularly some well-documented actions in the Ardennes.

4/10 Weak at Best ( )

A very interesting book about the history of US tank division in WW2. ( )

As history, this book is pretty bad. It’s full of repetitions (we read about the underground V2 plant at Nordhausen at three times, with identical language), speculation and myth presented as fact (most notably the author’s frequently repeated opinion that General Patton personally blocked the development of the M26 tank) and just plain errors (the author confuses Darmstadt and Dresden).


However, as a story you might hear in the VFW - when the old-timers (the author was 80 when the book was published) had a little bit more to drink than they should and begin with some funny anecdotes told dozens of times before, then get a thousand yard stare and begin talking about things that nobody heard before, or should hear - it’s pretty good. Belton Cooper was a university graduate with a degree in naval architecture and a ROTC commission. So naturally he was sent to Europe as an armor maintenance officer. His job was location, recovery, and repair of battle-damaged tanks. Although this was nominally a “rear area” job, in the fluid mobile warfare that developed Lt. Cooper got shot at his share of times (and at one point found himself in command of a group of replacement tanks being driven to the front that had to be pressed into service as an impromptu blocking force). He also had to recover many tanks with what was left of the crew still inside, which led to his vehement belief that the US Army needed a more heavily armed and armored tank in WWII. There are plenty of WWII memoirs around, but we don’t often get to hear from the support troops; it’s clear from this account that they were vital. So don’t get it for the bogus history, but for the very valid “I was there” account. ( )