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The Latest Armour Books ReviewedOsprey
Hunt the Bismark
Publisher: Osprey
Author: Angus Konstam
ISBN: 9781472833860
Format: Hardback
Price: £25.00
Bismarck entered service
in the summer of 1940.
She was well-armed, with
eight 15-inch guns as
well as a powerful array of lighter weapons,
while her armoured protection earned her
the reputation of being unsinkable. This
claim was inally put to the test in May 1941,
when she sortied into the Atlantic and fought
the legendary battle of the Denmark Strait,
destroying HMS Hood, the pride of the Royal
Navy. Bismarck was now loose in the North
Atlantic. However, damage sustained in the
battle limited her ability to roam at will, while
the Royal Navy deployed the Home Fleet to
revenge the Hood. The stage was set for the
greatest chase story in the history of naval
warfare. Drawing on a wealth of irst-hand
accounts and intertwining extensive research
into a fast-paced narrative, this is the most
readable and accurate account of Bismarck’s
epic voyage ever produced.
British Escort Carriers 1941-45
Publisher: Osprey
Author: Angus
Konstam
ISBN:
9781472833250
Format: Hardback
Price: £11.99
In 1941, as the Battle
of the Atlantic raged
and ship losses
mounted, the British
Admiralty desperately
tried to ind ways to
defeat the U-Boat threat to Britain’s maritime
lifeline. Facing a shortage of traditional
aircraft carriers and shore-based aircraft, the
Royal Navy, as a stopgap measure, converted
merchant ships into small ‘escort carriers’.
These were later joined by a growing number
of American-built escort carriers, sent as part
of the Lend-Lease agreement. Illustrated
throughout with detailed full-colour
artwork and contemporary photographs,
this fascinating study explores in detail how
these adaptable ships had such an enormous
impact on the outcome of World War II’s
European Theatre.
Panzerfaust v Sherman
Publisher: Osprey
Author: Steven J Zaloga
ISBN: 9781472832313
Format: Softback
Price: £13.99
In the summer of 1944, across the
battleields of Normandy, US tanks were
confronted with a dangerous challenge:
the mobile and deadly Panzerfaust and
Panzerschreck anti-tank weapons wielded by
the German infantry. Having only occasionally
encountered such weaponry before, the US
tankers were ill-equipped to defend against
this kind of attack, and
the threat only increased
as the summer wore on.
This Duel title follows the
technological battle for
dominance that ensued, as
the US Army devised new
ways to defend against the
threat posed by the German
shaped-charge projectiles.
Drawing on irst-hand
accounts from the men on the ground, this
illustrated title examines the evolving trial of
strength between US armour and innovative
German anti-tank weaponry in the climactic
months of World War II in Europe.Soviet Partisan v German Security Soldier
Publisher: Osprey
Author: Alexander Hill
ISBN: 9781472825667
Format: Softback
Price: £13.99
The savage partisan war on
the Eastern Front during
World War II saw a wide
variety of forces deployed
by both sides. On the Soviet
side, civilian partisans fought alongside and
in co-operation with Red Army troops and
Red Army and NKVD ‘special forces’. On the
German side, German Army security divisions,
with indigenous components including cavalry,
fought alongside SS police and Wafen-SS units
and other front-line troops employed for short
periods in the anti-partisan role. Featuring
specially commissioned artwork and drawing
upon an array of sources, this is an absorbing
account of the brutal ighting between German
security forces and their Soviet partisan
opponents during the long struggle for victory
on World War II’s Eastern Front.
http://www.ospreypublishing.comPen and Sword
The Battle for Arnhem
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Author: Anthony Tucker-Jones
ISB N : 978152673 0 015
Format: Softback
Price: £14.99Operation Market Garden, September
1944, the Netherlands. Three parachute
drops and one armoured charge. The prize
was the last bridge at Arnhem over the
Neder Rijn. Taken intact it would provide
the Allies with a back door into Germany –
the famous ‘Bridge Too Far’. This was one
of the most audacious and imaginative
operations of the war, and it failed, and
Anthony Tucker-Jones’s photographic
history is a vivid introduction to it.
In a sequence of almost 200 archive
photographs accompanied by a detailed
narrative he describes the landing of
British and American parachutists and
glider troops. At the same time British
tanks spearheaded a sixty-mile dash
along ‘Hell’s Highway’ to link up with the
lightly armed and heavily outnumbered
airborne forces. Most books about the
resulting battle concentrate on the
struggle at Arnhem and the heroism of
the British 1st Airborne Division. This book
puts that episode in its wider context.
In particular it focuses on the eforts of
the US 101st and 82nd airborne divisions
to hold of counterattacks by German
battlegroups during the tanks’ advance.
The photographs give a dramatic insight
into all sides of a remarkable but ill-fated
operation which has fascinated historians
and been the subject of controversy
ever since. They also portray, as only
photographs can, the men who were
involved and the places and conditions in
which the ighting took place.(^) http://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk
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