Download or read book A13 Cruiser Mk V Covenanter a Technical History written by P. M. Knight and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2015-03-08 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book documents for the first time the full history of the design and development of the Covenanter tank, giving in-depth coverage of the issues that beset the machine, and how they were eventually resolved. It dispels many of the myths that have attached themselves to the Covenanter story, revealing that far from being a compromised design whose problems with cooling and reliability were never cured, it was in fact a sound vehicle whose problems need never have arisen in the first place, were it not for the urgent need for tanks of any description in the aftermath of the disaster of the Battle Of France. This led to the premature introduction of the Covenanter before its development had been completed, with a consequent impact on its reputation. Contrary to popular belief, the Covenanter was judged fit for frontline service, and only missed out by the narrowest of margins. Drawn from original archive sources, this book sheds new light on one of the most controversial weapons of World War 2.
Download or read book A13 Cruiser Mk V Covenanter Tank a Technical History written by P. M. Knight and published by . This book was released on 2018-02-09 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Covenanter was intended to be the main equipment of the Armoured Divisions during the early years of the Second World War, and was a generally reliable tank that was well suited to its primary task of home defence. Due to a rather convoluted series of events, mainly involving material shortages, it would not see service overseas, and as Britain's strategic circumstances evolved it would increasingly be used as a training tank. If the Covenanter's active service was relatively uneventful, its development life was the very opposite, with two drastically different variants of the original machine being created, and constant refinement being undertaken while it was in the hands of its users. The Covenanter was reflective of the many blind spots in the British Army's pre-war thinking as regards Armoured Fighting Vehicles, and from its travails much practical experience was gained that benefited subsequent tank designs.
Download or read book A15 Cruiser Mk VI Crusader Tank A Technical History written by P. M. Knight and published by . This book was released on 2015-05-17 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There can be few tanks that have proved as controversial in their deployment as the Crusader, a tank that was invested with high hopes on its entry into service in 1941. This book investigates in unprecedented detail the issues that impinged on its service life. Drawing extensively on original archive sources, a new perspective is drawn on both the employment of the tank itself, and on British tank development of the era. The complex story that unfolds encompasses many interwoven and sometimes contradictory threads, allowing the author to reach both perceptive and surprising conclusions.
Download or read book A13 Mk I Mk II Cruiser Tanks A Technical History written by P. M. Knight and published by . This book was released on 2019-08-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The A13 Cruiser Tank was created by Colonel Giffard Le Quesne Martel after he had witnessed the performance of the fast Soviet BT tanks while on a military mission to Russia in 1936. These had in turn been developed from a prototype tank designed by the mercurial American engineer J. Walter Christie. The British Army quickly imported one of Christie's tanks and set about modifying it to suit their requirements, in collaboration with Lord Nuffield. The result, achieved in a mere two years, was a powerfully armed, highly mobile, though lightly armoured tank. This book follows the development history of the A13 up to and including the Battle of France, where any merits it may have possessed were overshadowed by poor preparation and the inadequate organisation and tactics of the Royal Armoured Corps.
Download or read book Crusader and Covenanter Cruiser Tanks 1939 45 written by David Fletcher and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-05-20 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Covenanter (which never saw active service) and Crusader Cruiser tanks were developed between 1939 and 1940. The Crusader first saw action in the North African desert in June 1941: its speed and sleek design made it a hard target to hit, and the tank was well-respected by the Afrikakorps for its velocity in combat. But its hurried development prior to World War II also made it prone to mechanical failure. This book examines the Covenanter and the many variants of the Crusader tank, detailing the designs, developments and disappointments of these infamous World War II tanks.
Download or read book British Cruiser Tank A13 Mk I Mk II written by Peter Brown and published by . This book was released on 2015-04-16 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The A13 Mk. I was the first British Cruiser tank to use the Christie suspension system and set the style for all other Cruisers built in World War II. Together with the improved Mk. II and Mk. IIA it played an important part in the battles in France in 1940 and North Africa in 1941. This book covers its development, production and service, filling a long-neglected gap in the history of British armored vehicles. It includes over 140 period black and white photos from archives and private collections, many never before published, 7pp 1/35th scale plans, 3 pp technical drawings and sketches, and 27 profusely researched full-color plates. Its author has researched British AFVs for 40 years and has contributed many articles to professional military and modeling magazines.REVIEWS The book opens with 18 pages giving the development and service history of the A13, including many tables of information such as unit strengths, tank availability and the like. Designed using the large road wheels of the Christie suspension system it was used in service during the early stages of the war by the BEF in France, as well as the 8th Army in North Africa. As well as the UK, others were used in Greece, Cyprus and Malta which are all mentioned, as well as some captured in usable condition by the Wehrmacht. While this section is illustrated with helpful archive photos, the book then moves on to providing another 52-page Photo Gallery. Here we find a collection of archive photos, many of which I have not seen before, showing the A13 in the UK as well as in France and North Africa, all of which have well informed and useful captions. There are over 140 archive photos in the book and these include some which I thing modelers will find especially useful in diorama ideas as well as the details illustrated on the tanks themselves.- Military Modelling"Modelers will love the excellent drawings of all the variants of the A13 Cruiser tank family as well as the 1/35 scale color plates which will make finishing and correcting the Bronco model kits much easier... Highly Recommended for all Christie tank design fans and early war British armour fans."- Cookie Sewell
Download or read book A Midshipman s War written by Frank Wade and published by Trafford. This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The World War II Mediterranean sea battles are not well known. Many of our ships were sunk, but Malta was saved. North Africa was cleared and Sicily taken in 1943.
Download or read book A34 Comet Tank A Technical History written by P. M. Knight and published by . This book was released on 2016-11-25 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The A34 Comet was the ultimate iteration of the Cruiser series of fast, mobile tanks, and built on the hard lessons that had been learned with earlier designs. However, it was also brought into being at a time when British industrial capacity was nearing exhaustion, and when officialdom already had one eye on the transition to more profitable peacetime production. As such, the Comet saga was one of the husbanding of the scarce, and declining, resources available to the tank programme against the backdrop of a conflict whose end was already in sight. As this book demonstrates in depth, the result was a well-balanced design that optimised the possibilities presented by the previous Cruisers. However, it would be outshone by its ubiquitous successor, the A41 Centurion.
Download or read book Rude Mechanicals written by A. J. Smithers and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 1989-01-26 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this sequel to "An New Excalibur", which examined the development of the tank during World War I and after, Smithers examines the role played by tanks in World War II. At the beginning of the war only the Germans and the Russians had realized the full power of the tank. The British and the Americans were forced to try to catch up. One difficulty was fundamentally a matter of finding the right tool for the right job. In the last year of the war, the Germans relied on the immense King Tigers, which lacked speed and manoeuvrability; while the Allies were confined to Shermans, Cromwells and Churchills, which were incapable of making a heavyweight impact. Each side had some envy for the other.
Download or read book Armored Champion written by Steven Zaloga and published by Stackpole Books. This book was released on 2015-05-15 with total page 701 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Armor expert Zaloga enters the battle over the best tanks of World War II with this heavy-caliber blast of a book armed with more than forty years of research. • Provocative but fact-based rankings of the tanks that fought the Second World War • Breaks the war into eight periods and declares Tanker's Choice and Commander's Choice for each • Champions include the German Panzer IV and Tiger, Soviet T-34, American Pershing, and a few surprises • Compares tanks' firepower, armor protection, and mobility as well as dependability, affordability, tactics, training, and overall combat performance • Relies on extensive documentation from archives, government studies, and published sources—much of which has never been published in English before • Supported by dozens of charts and diagrams and hundreds of photos
Download or read book The Illustrated Guide to Tanks of the World written by George Forty and published by Bookmart. This book was released on 2007 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A definative encyclopaedia of the most important tanks in history: over 230 tanks are shown in 500 colour and black & white photographs. Tanks from every corner of the world including those used in WWI and WWII. Specification boxes provide at a glance information.
Download or read book Sherman Tanks of the Red Army written by Peter Samsonov and published by . This book was released on 2020-12-21 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than 4000 examples of the famous diesel-fueled M4A2 Sherman tank were sent to the Soviet Union during the Second World War under the Lead-Lease program. These American-built vehicles were operated by Red Army crews against the Germans during some of the bitterest fighting on the Eastern Front - yet despite serving with distinction and being well-liked by their crews, relatively little has been written about these vehicles until now. Tank expert Peter Samsonov looks at the origins of the M4A2 in Soviet service and the machines that were received from the US as well as providing a detailed assessment of how they fared in combat on the front line.
Download or read book British Battle Tanks written by David Fletcher and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-08-24 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This lavishly illustrated volume details the design, development and operational history of the British-made tanks in World War II. Plagued by unreliable vehicles and poorly thought-out doctrine, the early years of World War II were years of struggle for Britain's tank corps. Relying on tanks built in the late 1930s, and those designed and built with limited resources in the opening years of the war, they battled valiantly against an opponent well versed in the arts of armoured warfare. This book is the second of a multi-volume history of British tanks by renowned British armour expert David Fletcher MBE. It covers the development and use of the Matilda, Crusader, and Valentine tanks that pushed back the Axis in North Africa, the much-improved Churchill that fought with distinction from North Africa to Normandy, and the excellent Cromwell tank of 1944–45. It also looks at Britain's super-heavy tank projects, the TOG1 and TOG2, and the Tortoise heavy assault tank, designed to smash through the toughest of battlefield conditions, but never put into production.
Download or read book Covenanter A13 Mk III Cruiser Tank Mk V written by Janusz Ledwoch and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Rolls Royce Armoured Car written by David Fletcher and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-04-20 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first Rolls-Royce armoured car was a privately owned vehicle fitted with a machine-gun and a limited amount of armour plate, used by the Royal Naval Air Service in Flanders in 1914. By 1915, nearly 100 had been built and turned over to the Army. From then on, as Sir Albert Stern said 'They searched the world for war', operating as far apart as the northwest frontier of India, the Middle East and southern Africa. The cars were fast, quiet and reliable but above all powerful. 'A Rolls in the desert is above rubies,' said Lawrence of Arabia. After World War I, the War Office continued to produce the Rolls-Royce while tinkering with the design. These further cars served all across the Empire, including in Ireland and even later Shanghai, returning for a final brief appearance in the early stages of World War II.This book tells the complete story of the Rolls-Royce Armoured Car, following its design and development as it fought from theatre to theatre during World War I and the turbulent inter-war years.
Download or read book The Great Tank Scandal British armour in the Second World War written by David Fletcher and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Designing the T 34 written by Peter Samsonov and published by Gallantry. This book was released on 2019-12-27 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the German army launched Operation Barbarossa the invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, it was expecting to face and easily defeat outdated and obsolete tanks and for the most part it did, but it also received a nasty shock when it came up against the T-34. With its powerful gun and sloped armour, the T-34 was more than a match for the best German tanks at that time and the Germans regarded it with awe. German Field Marshal von Kleist, who commanded the latter stages of Barbarossa, called it the finest tank in the world. Using original wartime documents author and historian Peter Samsonov, creator of the Tank Archives blog, explains how the Soviets came to develop what was arguably the wars most revolutionary tank design.
