From the evacuation of France in 1940 to the final dash to Hamburg in 1945, the 5th Royal Tank Regiment were on the front line throughout the Second World War. Theirs was a war that saw them serve in Africa as part of the Desert Rats, before returning to Europe for the Normandy landings. Wherever they went, the notoriety of the 'Filthy Fifth' grew - they revelled in their reputation for fighting by their own rules. The Tank War explains how Britain, having lost its advantage in tank warfare by 1939, regained ground through shifts in tactics and leadership methods, as well as the daring and bravery of the crews themselves. Overturning the received wisdom of much Second World War history, Mark Urban shows how the tank regiments' advances were the equal of the feats of the German Panzer divisions. Drawing on a wealth of new material, from interviews with surviving soldiers to rarely seen archive material, this is an unflinchingly honest, unsentimental and often brutal account of the 5th RTR's wartime experiences. Capturing the characters in the crews and exploring the strategy behind their success, The Tank War is not just the story of an battle hardened unit, but something more extraordinary: the triumph of ordinary men, against long odds, in the darkest of times.

Drawing on a wealth of research, from interviews with surviving members to a treasure trove of rarely used archive material, Mark Urban has produced an unflinchingly honest, unsentimental account of the 5th RTR's wartime experiences. Capturing both characters in their crew and exploring the strategy behind their success, 'The Tank War' is not the story of an elite unit, but something more amazing: a regular unit of average men, thrust into war, who pulled together to achieve extraordinary things.

“An “insightful and informative” overview of the role of tanks in combat from the First World War to the present day (Dennis Showalter, author of Armor and Blood). The story of the battlefield in the twentieth century was dominated by a handful of developments. Foremost of these was the introduction and refinement of tanks. In Tank Warfare, Jeremy Black, a recipient of the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize from the Society for Military History, offers a comprehensive global account of the history of tanks and armored warfare in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. First introduced onto the battlefield during World War I, tanks represented the reconciliation of firepower and mobility and immediately seized the imagination of commanders and commentators concerned about the constraints of ordinary infantry. The developments of technology and tactics in the interwar years were realized in the German blitzkrieg in World War II and beyond. Yet the account of armor on the battlefield is a tale of limitations and defeats as well as of potential and achievements. Tank Warfare examines the traditional narrative of armored warfare while at the same time challenging it, and Black suggests that tanks were no “silver bullet” on the battlefield. Instead, their success was based on their inclusion in the general mix of weaponry available to commanders and the context in which they were used. “An excellent overview of the subject.” —Alaric Searle, author of Armoured Warfare: A Military, Political and Global History

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.

“For all the history buffs on warfare of the last century, Tanks is a perfect choice . . . packed with fascinating information” (San Francisco Book Review). This Casemate Short History—by the authors of Tanks in Hell: A Marine Corps Tank Company on Tarawa—provides an informative and entertaining introduction to this iconic weapon of the last hundred years. Tanks first ventured into battle on the Somme in 1916, and by the end of the war, countries were beginning to choose “heavy” or “light” tank designs to suit their preferred doctrine. Design then stagnated until World War II brought about rapid change. Tanks would prove integral to fighting in almost every theater; the Germans swept across Europe using tanks to spearhead their blitzkrieg method of war, until Soviet tanks proved more than their match and led to some epic tank battles on a huge scale. After World War II, tank designs became increasingly sophisticated and armor undertook a variety of roles in conflicts, with mixed results. American armor in Korea was soon forced into an infantry support role, which it reprised in Vietnam, while Soviet armor was defeated in guerrilla warfare in Afghanistan. However, tanks played a pivotal role in the American “shock and awe” doctrine in two wars in Iraq, and tanks remain a crucial weapons system on the battlefield. “Comprehensive despite its conciseness. For example, it addresses the employment of tanks in lesser-known conflicts such as the Indio-Pakistani and Sino-Vietnamese wars. The book provides context for contemporary tank operations and offers a perspective on the way ahead.” —Military Review

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

Tank Warfare looks at the way that tanks changed warfare from their first introduction on the static Western Front of World War I, through the proving ground of World War II, where the tank became the queen of the battlefield, to its more dangerous position on the modern battlefield. Today, the tank is still a major asset but against it there has evolved a range of defensive antitank options - light infantry-borne antitank weapons, mines, attack helicopters, and tank-busting aircraft - that do much to dull its edge of invincibility.Each chapter in Tank Warfare examines carefully the evolution of tanks in the period, illustrating the seminal types, and looks at the changes to the threats against armor, assessing the improvement of the tank's physical and tactical defenses against such threats. It is intelligently written, cogent, and extremely well illustrated and it provides a much-needed discussion of a vital component of land warfare. Tim Ripley is a research associate at Lancaster University's Centre for Defence and International Security Studies (CDISS) in the United Kingdom. Over the past decade he has traveled extensively in the Middle East and Balkan region as a correspondent for Janes's Defence Weekly, Jane's Intelligence Review and Flight International.

A detailed history of France’s development of tanks and the combat the tanks served in during World War I, by an armored warfare expert. The French tank corps was an essential part of the French army from 1917 onwards, yet its history has been strangely neglected in English accounts of the Western Front. Using information derived from the French military archives at Vincennes—much of which has never been published in English before—author Tim Gale describes the design and development of the tanks, the political and organizational issues that arose between the French military and civilian bureaucracy, and the record of these pioneering fighting vehicles in combat. All the major engagements in which French tanks participated are depicted in graphic detail, often quoting directly from recollections left by individual tank commanders of their experience in battle, and each operation is assessed in terms of its impact on French tactics in general and on tank tactics in particular. The Nivelle offensive and the battles of Malmaison, the Matz, Soissons, and Champagne are featured in the narrative, and the actions of the French tanks serving with the U.S. army are covered, too. Much of the material in Tim Gale’s study will be entirely new to non-French speakers. The story will be fascinating reading for anyone who is interested in the Great War, the French army, military innovation and the history of armored warfare. Praise for French Tanks of the Great War “Gale’s book . . . is very easy to dip into.” —Military Modelling “It is a wealth of information and I would definitely recommend it.” —Forgotten Weapons

Pivotal to modern warfare, tanks have dominated the battlefield for over a century. Get up close to more than 400 military colossuses with this definitive visual guide to armoured vehicles. In 1916, the British built a vehicle that could pound the battlefield impervious to enemy fire, crushing obstacles and barbed wire in its path. The first tank, or "Mother" as it was known, had arrived. In The Tank Book you can view it in detail, along with other iconic models including the German Panzer, the legendary Tiger, the Vickers Medium Mark II, the Centurion, and the Hellcat - the fastest armoured fighting vehicle ever. This comprehensive volume takes you through the most exciting story in recent military history with the development of heavy artillery, anti-tank weaponry, and the men - such as Mikail Koshkin and Sir William Tritton - who designed these awe-inspiring beasts. Produced with The Tank Museum, The Tank Book traces the tank's development in response to two world wars, Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War and many other conflicts. It shows each model in detail, highlighting details such as their performance, specification, armour, weaponry, and much more. If you are interested in modern warfare, The Tank Book is truly unmissable reading.

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.