Download or read book Armoured Warfare in the British Army 1914 1939 written by Richard Taylor and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2022-04-06 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first volume in a three-volume illustrated history of the evolution of armored manoeuvre warfare in the British army, covering the period from 1914 until 1939. Author Dick Taylor’s tour de force covers the evolution of the tank and armored cars in response to the specific conditions created by trench warfare, the history of the use of tanks during the war, as well as the critical period between the wars in which the tank was both refined and neglected. He also looks in detail at the amalgamations and mechanization of the horsed cavalry which led to the formation of the Royal armored Corps in 1939. His detailed and absorbing narrative covers the social and human aspects of the story as well as the technology, and explains how the nation that invented and first fielded the tank in 1916 struggled to maintain the lead after the Armistice.

Download or read book Armoured Warfare in the British Army 1939 1945 written by Dick Taylor and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2022-10-21 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second volume in Dick Taylor’s three-volume illustrated history of the evolution of armored maneuver warfare in the British army covers the period of the Second World War, in which the tank came of age and developed into the principal land weapon of decision. He describes how, during the first half of the war, the British army came close to disaster from the armored warfare perspective and how the bitter lessons of failure were learned in time to deliver success in 1944 and 1945. As well as providing a fascinating overview of the tactical use of armor during the main campaigns, he considers such much-neglected aspects as the role of training and organization, officer selection and recruitment, and the mechanization of other arms. His wide-ranging book also features extensive, well-laid-out tables giving key information about British armor during this period. This expert account quotes heavily from the vivid recollections of soldiers who served in armor, and is not afraid to criticize as well as praise.

Download or read book British Armoured Divisions and Their Commanders 1939 1945 written by Richard Doherty and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2013-07-16 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A total of eleven British armoured divisions were formed during the 1939-1945 war but, as this highly informative book reveals, just eight saw action.In 1940 only 1st Armoured Division faced the German blitzkrieg and it was in the North African desert that armoured divisions came into their own. The terrain was ideal and six such divisions of Eighth Army fought Rommel's Panzers into submission. Three were disbanded prior to the invasion of Sicily and Italy. The campaign from D-Day onwards saw the Guards Armoured, 7th Armoured (the Desert Rats), 11th and Percy Hobart's 79th Armoured Division in the thick of the action.Of particular interest are the men who commanded these elite formations and the way their characters contributed to the outcome of operations. While some, such as Dick McCreery, went onto greater heights, others did not make the grade; the stakes were high. A number, such as 'Pip' Roberts, were just perfectly suited in the role.Written by a leading military historian, this book describes many fascinating aspects of armoured warfare from its uncertain beginnings, through the development of tactics and the evolving tank design. Due to British deficiencies, reliance had to be placed on US Grants and Shermans, with the Comet coming late and the Centurion too late.The combination of gripping historical narrative and well researched fact make this an invaluable and highly readable work on the contribution of British Armoured Divisions to victory in the Second World War.

Download or read book Men Ideas and Tanks written by J. P. Harris and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Men, ideas and tanks reviews the development of British military ideas on armoured forces from 1903 to 1939. Great Britain was the nation which first developed the tank, first used it in action and first gained dramatic results by employment. The British continued to be world leaders in the field of mechanised warfare until the early 1930s. Now available in paperback for the first time, J. P. Harris original work offers new interpretations of the early history of British armoured forces and explains why Great Britain had lost the lead by the outbreak of the Second World War. This work will be of interest to all those concerned with British military history in the first half of the twentieth century, with the history of mechanised warfare and with the history of military thought.

Download or read book The British Army and the Theory of Armored Warfare 1918 1940 written by Robert H. Larson and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book British Battle Tanks written by David Fletcher and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book British Anti Tank Warfare written by John Plant and published by New Generation Publishing. This book was released on 2014-08-11 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an attempt to describe the British army's approach to Anti-Tank Warfare from its inception during the Great War until 1945. During the Great War the army found little reason to study anti-tank warfare and after the war what little anti-tank awareness there was slowly faded away. This was inevitable because of the 'ten year rule' which proclaimed that there would be no major war in that period, and it was only in the second half of the thirties that the British army started to take the subject seriously. In 1939 the British anti-tank armament and tactics were inadequate, this became a major worry after Dunkirk and this book gives particular emphasis to the anti-tank defences built in England against the expected German invasion. Under the pressure of necessity tactics and equipment improved reaching a high point of effectiveness at Medenine in 1943. After that, although equipment improved slightly, the threat was never again so great and the British army could confidently handle whatever Axis armour came its way. There must be some doubt if anti-tank warfare should be regarded as a subject in its own right, mostly because it is purely a reaction to the invention and progress of the tank. The writer of this book believes it should be, and this book should support this view.

Download or read book Toward Combined Arms Warfare written by Jonathan Mallory House and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1985 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Armoured Warfare in the First World War 1916 18 written by Anthony Tucker-Jones and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2016-11-30 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hundred years ago, on 15 September 1916, on the Western Front during the Battle of the Somme, the tank made its debut on the battlefield. The first tanks were crude, unreliable, vulnerable weapons, but they changed the character of land warfare forever, and Anthony Tucker-Jones's photographic history of these pioneering armored vehicles is the ideal introduction to them. In a selection of over 150 archive photographs he offers a fascinating insight into the difficult early days of this innovative new weapon, describing its technical history and its performance in combat. While the Battle of Cambrai in 1917 is often held up as the first large-scale tank battle, tanks had already served at Flers-Courcelette on the Somme, during the Nivelle offensive and the battles of Messines and Passchendaele. His book shows that the development of the tank was fraught with technical obstacles and battlefield setbacks. It was invented by the British and the French at almost the same time to help break the deadlock of trench warfare, and the British deployed it first in 1916. Belatedly the Germans followed the British and French example. The initial designs were continuously refined during two years of intense warfare. Finding the right balance between power and weight, getting the armament right, and working out the best tactics for tanks on the battlefield was a tricky, often deadly business.

Download or read book Raising Churchill s Army written by David French and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2000-06-08 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first serious analysis of the combat capability of the British army in the Second World War. It sweeps away the myth that the army suffered from poor morale, and that it only won its battles thorugh the use of 'brute force' and by reverting to the techniques of the First World War. David French analyses the place of the army in British strategy in the interwar period and during the Second World War. He shows that after 1918 the General Staff tried hard to learn the lessons of the First World War, enthusiastically embracing technology as the best way of minimizing future casualties. In the first half of the Second World War the army did suffer from manifold weaknesses, not just in the form of shortages of equipment, but also in the way in which it applied its doctrine. Few soldiers were actively eager to close with the enemy, but the morale of the army never collapsed and its combat capability steadily improved from 1942 onwards. Professor French assesses Montgomery's contributions to the war effort and concludes that most important were his willingness to impose a uniform understanding of doctrine on his subordinates, and to use mechanized firepower in ways quite different from Haig in the First World War.

Download or read book British Armour and Recce in the Second World War written by Richard a. Rinaldi and published by . This book was released on 2012-11-01 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume covers all of the Army's armoured and reconnaissance units, whatever their source. It thus contains some information on infantry units-in particular the Guards battalions converted to armour and the six motorcycle battalions of the 1939-40 period. However, complete detail on those units will be found in the later Infantry volume. This work also includes armoured units of the Royal Engineers and Royal Marines.

Download or read book British Battle Tanks written by David Fletcher and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-08-23 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A highly illustrated history of the development and operation of the first British tanks, published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of their introduction, during World War I.

Download or read book The French Army s Tank Force and Armoured Warfare in the Great War written by Tim Gale and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-16 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent scholarship has challenged the assumption that military commanders during the First World War were inflexible, backward-looking and unwilling to exploit new technologies. Instead a very different picture is now emerging of armies desperately looking to a wide range of often untested and immature scientific and technological innovations to help break the deadlock of the Western Front. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the development of tank warfare, which both the British and the French hoped would give them a decisive edge in their offensives of 1917 and 1918. Whilst the British efforts to develop armoured warfare have been well chronicled, there has been no academic study in English on the French tank force - the Artillerie Spéciale - during the Great War. As such, this book provides a welcome new perspective on an important but much misunderstood area of the war. Such was the scale of the French tanks’ failure in their first engagement in 1917, it was rumoured that the Artillerie Spéciale was in danger of being disbanded, yet, by the end of the war it was the world’s largest and most technologically advanced tank force. This work examines this important facet of the French army’s performance in the First World War, arguing that the AS fought the war in as intelligent and sensible a manner as was possible, given the immature state of the technology available. No amount of sound tank doctrine could compensate for the fragility of the material, for the paucity of battlefield communication equipment and for the lack of tank-infantry training opportunities. Only by 1918 was the French army equipped with enough reliable tanks, as well as aircraft and heavy-artillery, to begin to exercise a mastery of the new form of combined-arms warfare. The successful French armoured effort outlined in this study (including a listing of all the combat engagements of the French tank service in the Great War) highlights a level of military effectiveness within

Download or read book War and the World written by Jeremy Black and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An attempt to write a global history of warfare in the modern era. Jeremy Black, here presents a wide-ranging account of the nature, purpose and experience of war over the last half millennium.

Download or read book Uncovering Ways of War written by Thomas G. Mahnken and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas G. Mahnken sheds light on the shadowy world of U.S. intelligence-gathering, tracing how America learned of military developments in Japan, Germany, and Great Britain in the period between the two world wars.

Download or read book Armoured Warfare written by Alaric Searle and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-02-09 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book charts the history of armoured warfare from the first use of the tank in 1916 right through to the 21st century, adopting military, political and global perspectives. Alaric Searle explores the origins of the tank, the part it played in the First World War and its contribution to the outcome of the war. He considers its role as a tool of propaganda, the military controversies of the interwar period and the employment of armoured forces in all the major theatres in the Second World War. Since the First World War, major and medium-sized powers have invested heavily in armoured forces. Searle looks at the conduct of mechanised warfare in Korea, Indo-China and Vietnam, and during conflicts such as the Arab-Israeli Wars and the Gulf Wars. Armoured Warfare adopts a global perspective, providing the most comprehensive survey of the history of the subject currently available. With a detailed bibliography of both primary and secondary sources, it is an ideal companion for those studying armoured warfare, modern military history and war studies.

Download or read book Mechanised Force written by David Fletcher and published by Stationery Office Books (TSO). This book was released on 1991 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the Tank Corps from 1919 up until the time when, as the Royal Tank Regiment, it went to war again in 1939. The book chronicles the events and innovations of the years between the wars.