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“A comprehensive analysis of WWII’s greatest land battle and one of history’s greatest armor engagements.” —Publishers Weekly On July 5, 1943, the greatest land battle in history began when Nazi and Red Army forces clashed near the town of Kursk, on the western border of the Soviet Union. Code named “Operation Citadel,” the German offensive would cut through the bulge in the eastern front that had been created following Germany’s retreat at the Battle of Stalingrad. But the Soviets, well-informed about Germany’s plans through their network of spies, had months to prepare. Two million men supported by six thousand tanks, thirty-five thousand guns, and five thousand aircrafts convened in Kursk for an epic confrontation that was one of the most important military engagements in history, the epitome of “total war.” It was also one of the most bloody, and despite suffering seven times more casualties, the Soviets won a decisive victory that became a turning point in the war. With unprecedented access to the journals and testimonials of the officers, soldiers, political leaders, and citizens who lived through it, The Battle of the Tanks is the definitive account of an epic showdown that changed the course of history. “A stellar account of the Battle of Kursk in 1943.” —Booklist
In July 1943, the German Army launched what proved to be its last great offensive on the Eastern Front. Kursk is a comprehensive history of the last time that Germany held the strategic initiative in the war against the Soviet Union. Kursk shows how a bitter struggle developed between the German and Soviet forces, which sucked in huge numbers of ta
The Battle of the Bulge raises many questions which, until now, have not been adequately answered: How did the major tank types perform during the battle? What were the specific 'lessons learned' from the combat? And did these lessons result in changes to tanks in the subsequent months? Offering detailed answers to these questions, and many more, this book provides a survey of the principal tank and tank-equivalents (such as tank destroyers and Jagdpanzers) that took part in the Ardennes Campaign of December 1944–January 1945. Beginning with a basic overview of the campaign, accompanied by an order of battle of the major armoured units, it examines the opposing forces, covering the organization of the two tank forces to explain how they were deployed. Author Steven Zaloga also scrutinises the technical balance between the opposing sides, comparing armour, mobility and firepower as well as other important factors such as reliability, crew situational awareness, and tank layout/efficiency. Full of specially commissioned and highly accurate artwork plates of the tanks themselves, as well as fascinating technical data based on cutting-edge research, this title is the definitive guide to tank warfare in the Battle of the Bulge.
A highly illustrated history of the development and operation of the first British tanks, published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of their introduction in World War I. When British soldiers charged across the Somme in September 1916 they were accompanied by a new and astonishing weapon – the tank. After a stuttering start armoured behemoths such as the Mark IV, Mark V and Whippet played a crucial role in bringing World War I to an end. Marking the centenary of their battlefield debut, this comprehensive volume traces the design and development of the famous British invention during World War I and the increasingly tense years of the 1920s and 30s, from the first crude but revolutionary prototype to the ever-more sophisticated designs of later years. Bolstered by historic photographs and stunning illustrations, author David Fletcher brings us the thrilling history behind the early British battle tanks.
This volume offers detailed information about the Red Army's preparation for and conduct of the Battle of Kursk, the nature of the war on the German Eastern Front, and on the range of horrors that have characterized warfare in the 20th century.
Failure to exploit the potential of an original idea is a recurring phenomenon in our national history. Few failures, however, can have been so costly in human life as that of our military commanders early in 1916 to appreciate that the tank was a war winning weapon. The slaughter of the Somme, Passchendaele and Ypres salient had to be endured before accepted 'conventional' methods were abandoned and the tank given a chance. Bryan Cooper describes the early tank actions in vivid detail, with many eye-witness accounts. He tells of the courage and endurance of the crews not just in battle but in the appalling conditions in which they had to drive and fight their primitive vehicles. Scalded, scorched and poisoned with exhaust fumes, constantly threatened with being burned to death, these crews eventually laid the foundation for the Allied Victory in World War I. The book is well illustrated with many original photographs which give the present day reader a glimpse of the infancy of a dominant weapon of modern war.
The Battle of Kursk was one of the defining moments of World War II. In July 1943, German forces under Erich von Manstein--one of Germany’s best generals--launched a massive attack in an offensive code-named Citadel. A week later, the Soviets counterattacked, sparking a huge clash of tanks at Prokhorovka, the largest armor battle in history, pitting more than 600 Soviet tanks against some 300 German panzers. Though the Germans gained a tactical victory, destroying huge numbers of Soviet tanks, they failed to achieve their objectives, and in the end the battle marked a turning point on the Eastern Front. The Red Army gained the strategic initiative and would not lose it.
The British Army's Challenger II Main Battle Tank is one of the most awesome war machines ever built. In March 2003, three Squadrons of Challenger 2s from the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, part of Britain's 7th Armoured Brigade, the fabled Desert Rats, gathered in Southern Iraq to prepare for battle.The Army's newest Big Guns were going to war for the first time. But Operation TELIC was a war which the Challenger 2, designed to operate in the fog and mud of the Central European Plain, had never been expected to fight. And one that would quickly break every rule of tank warfare including the golden maxim: never take a tank into a town. In Main Battle Tank, author Niall Edworthy, granted unprecedented access to the Scots DGs, tells the story of an extraordinary chapter in the history of British Army. From the terrifying rescue of a stricken Challenger 2 and countless nerve-shredding raids into Basra and Az Zubyar, to the biggest tank engagement fought by the British since the end of WWII, Main Battle Tank is the brutal, blistering true story of a war that tested man and machine to the bloody limit.
“Comprehensive scholarship and convincing reasoning, enhanced by an excellent translation, place this work on a level with the best of David Glantz” (Dennis Showalter, award-winning author of Patton and Rommel). This groundbreaking book examines the battle of Kursk between the Red Army and Wehrmacht, with a particular emphasis on its beginning on July 12, as the author works to clarify the relative size of the contending forces, the actual area of this battle, and the costs suffered by both sides. Valeriy Zamulin’s study of the crucible of combat during the titanic clash at Kursk—the fighting at Prokhorovka—is now available in English. A former staff member of the Prokhorovka Battlefield State Museum, Zamulin has dedicated years of his life to the study of the battle of Kursk, and especially the fighting on its southern flank involving the famous attack of the II SS Panzer Corps into the teeth of deeply echeloned Red Army defenses. A product of five years of intense research into the once-secret Central Archives of the Russian Ministry of Defense, this book lays out in enormous detail the plans and tactics of both sides, culminating in the famous and controversial clash at Prokhorovka on July 12, 1943. Zamulin skillfully weaves reminiscences of Red Army and Wehrmacht soldiers and officers into the narrative of the fighting, using in part files belonging to the Prokhorovka Battlefield State Museum. Zamulin has the advantage of living in Prokhorovka, so he has walked the ground of the battlefield many times and has an intimate knowledge of the terrain. Examining the battle primarily from the Soviet side, Zamulin reveals the real costs and real achievements of the Red Army at Kursk, and especially Prokhorovka. He examines mistaken deployments and faulty decisions that hampered the Voronezh Front’s efforts to contain the Fourth Panzer Army’s assault, and the valiant, self-sacrificial fighting of the Red Army’s soldiers and junior officers as they sought to slow the German advance and crush the II SS Panzer Corps with a heavy counterattack at Prokhorovka. Illustrated with numerous maps and photographs (including present-day views of the battlefield), and supplemented with extensive tables of data, Zamulin’s book is an outstanding contribution to the growing literature on the battle of Kursk, and further demolishes many of the myths and legends that grew up around it.
As Anthony Tucker-Jones shows in this highly illustrated, wide-ranging history, for most of the Cold War the tank retained its pre-eminence on the battlefield. The Arab-Israeli wars witnessed some of the biggest tank battles of all time, and tanks played key roles in conflicts in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan as well as in the Iran-Iraq War and the wars fought between India and Pakistan. But then in the mid-1960s anti-tank weapons became ever deadlier and the Mechanised Infantry Fighting Vehicle (MIFV), which was designed to support infantry and fight tanks, emerged and the heyday of the tank was over. Chapters cover each major phase in the evolution of the tank and of tank warfare during the period, from the battles fought in the late 1940s and 1950s with Second World War armoured vehicles like the T-34 and the Sherman, through to the designs common in the 1960s and 1970s like the T-55, Centurion, Challenger and M60 Patton, to the confrontation between the M1 Abrams and the T-72 during the Gulf War in 1991. Technical and design developments are important elements throughout the story, but so are dramatic changes in tactics and armaments which mean the tank has an increasingly uncertain role in modern warfare.