Landships II

Something has cropped up. There might be a very simple explanation.

It is generally agreed that the Polish A7Vs are a myth. On the FSU site, Witold J. Lawrynowicz lists the fate of all known A7Vs and the describes the origin of the myth thus:

"The Austrian book, "Heigl's Taschenbuch der Tanks" by von Zezschwitz printed 1938 started it all...

Did a Polish A7V ever exist? I doubt it. One source in Austria sites that A7V units were transferred to Poland via France after the Great War. Historical writer after writer quotes the same Austrian source."

http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/pol/polisha7v.html

However, the accompanying page from Taschenbuch der Tanks contains the following:

"Es sind etwa 25 Stück schwere Tanks beim Tankregiment in Przemsyl vorhanden, davon einige alte deutsche A-7-V (siehe T.T. 1926), daneben einige Mk V Tanks und zwar wohl Mk V* Tanks aus Frankreich."

[The Tank Regiment at Przemsyl has some 25 tanks at its disposal, of which some are old A7Vs (see Taschenbuch der Tanks 1926), alongside some Mk V as well as some Mk V* from France.]

That would indicate that von Zezschwitz had already made the claim in an earlier edition. Of course, that might simply mean that he made a mistake earlier than 1938, but that it was still a mistake. On the other hand, we do have the inconvenient A7V Imperator, which is a little difficult to fit into the theory that all vehicles are accounted for.

Jones, Rarey, and Icks claim in Chapter XVII that Poland possessed '10 Carden Lloyds, 100 Renault (FT), 70 Renault N C M27, 25 Char 2C or 3C, 60 Cardosowitz, 25 Mk V, 3 Mk V*, and 5 A7V'. And their book was published in 1933.

What makes one uneasy about this is that the Char 2C and , if there was such a thing, the 3C, can't possibly have been in Poland, and the French are supposed to have surrendered all their Mk V* at Geneva in 1930.

Is it simply that JR&I took their info from von Zezschwitz, who made his original mistake in 1926 and increasingly seems to have been wrong about a great deal?