I really enjoyed reading Perrett's books on the Matilda, Churchill, and Valentine from the early 1970s. But as I have looked at more books by him, I am starting to get a bit suspicious. First, in the Osprey book "Allied Tank Destroyers", he tells a story of 314 Anti-Tank Battery taking out a Tiger with an Archer. I have still been unable to corroborate this based on the war diaries or anything else. And just recently I looked at his book "The Hawks" about 14/20 Hussars, which contains this whopper: This is exactly the opposite of what I have read about who said what with regards to anti-tank gunnery in post-war archive files. For instance, "Anti-Tank Policy (Memorandum by D.R.A.)" from 1947. As far as I call tell, the RAC wanted to take over the responsibility (at least eventually) and the RA did not want to let it go. Perrett also repeats the old saw that the driver couldn't remain in his seat in the Archer. Has anyone seen anything else in his books which turned out to be incorrect?
It's more likely to be a consequence of the limited availability of information back in the day than anything negative. A trip to the archives then was to read stuff, not harvest it to read later at your leisure.
