At the outbreak of war in 1939 British tank crews were ill-equipped, under trained and badly led. As a consequence the lives of hundreds of crewmen were wasted unnecessarily. This was due not only to the poor design and construction of British tanks, but also to the lack of thought and planning on the part of successive pre-war governments and the War Office. Death by Design explores how and why Britain went from leading the world in tank design at the end of the First World War to lagging far behind the design quality of Russian and German tanks in the Second World War. This book is a much-needed warning to governments and military planners: a nation must always be prepared to defend itself and ensure that its soldiers are equipped with the tools to do so.

David Herrmann's work is the most complete study to date of how land-based military power influenced international affairs during the series of diplomatic crises that led up to the First World War. Instead of emphasizing the naval arms race, which has been extensively studied before, Herrmann draws on documentary research in military and state archives in Germany, France, Austria, England, and Italy to show the previously unexplored effects of changes in the strength of the European armies during this period. Herrmann's work provides not only a contribution to debates about the causes of the war but also an account of how the European armies adopted the new weaponry of the twentieth century in the decade before 1914, including quick-firing artillery, machine guns, motor transport, and aircraft.

In a narrative account that runs from the beginning of a series of international crises in 1904 until the outbreak of the war, Herrmann points to changes in the balance of military power to explain why the war began in 1914, instead of at some other time. Russia was incapable of waging a European war in the aftermath of its defeat at the hands of Japan in 1904-5, but in 1912, when Russia appeared to be regaining its capacity to fight, an unprecedented land-armaments race began. Consequently, when the July crisis of 1914 developed, the atmosphere of military competition made war a far more likely outcome than it would have been a decade earlier.

Regarded by many as one of the greatest tanks ever built, the German Panther is probably the finest medium tank of the Second World War. Some 7,000 were made, combining firepower, armour protection and mobility that was unmatched by any other tank of the period. On the Eastern Front it was the primary nemesis of the Russian T-34 tank in the last two years of the war. Ironically, the Panther's genesis lay in the need for the Germans to come up with a new tank design after the T-34 had rendered the Panzer III obsolete almost overnight after Operation Barbarossa in June 1941. The Panther made its combat debut in Russia at the Battle of Kursk in July 1943 and all major German tank development after this point was influenced by the design features of the T-34. Soviet tank crews were not alone in recognising the Panther as a deadly adversary. The Allied armies in Europe encountered it during the Normandy campaign in 1944 and considered the Panther to be the most formidable German armoured fighting vehicle in Europe through to 1945. Such was the effectiveness of the Panther that the French Army used it for a period after the Second World War as it rebuilt its own armoured force.

Hundreds of photos, including many never published before with riveting accounts of armored warfare in World War II Compares the Sherman to other tanks, including the Panther and Tiger Author is a world-renowned expert on the Sherman tank and American armor

Some tank crews referred to the American M4 Sherman tank as a "death trap." Others, like Gen. George Patton, believed that the Sherman helped win World War II. So which was it: death trap or war winner? Armor expert Steven Zaloga answers that question by recounting the Sherman's combat history. Focusing on Northwest Europe (but also including a chapter on the Pacific), Zaloga follows the Sherman into action on D-Day, among the Normandy hedgerows, during Patton's race across France, in the great tank battle at Arracourt in September 1944, at the Battle of the Bulge, across the Rhine, and in the Ruhr pocket in 1945.

Commissioned out of Sandhurst in 1943, nineteen-year-old Bill Bellamy joined the 8th King's Royal Irish Hussars. Following the Normandy landings in June 1944, he was involved in the great tank battles around the town of Caen, the battle of Mont Pincon, and then the Allied breakout into Belgium. There followed the advance into Holland and onwards to the River Maas. In October 1944, during this phase of the fighting, he was awarded an immediate Military Cross for bravery during the battle to secure the Dutch village of Doornhoek. In the spring of 1945, the 8th Hussars thrust into Germany and on towards Hamburg, eventually winding up at the very heart of Hitler's Reich, Berlin.

Bill kept diaries and notes of his experiences, and shortly after the war he used them to write up a series of articles recounting his part as a junior officer in the hard-fought battles to free Europe from the Nazis.

His accounts of tank fighting in the leafy Normandy bocage at the height of summer, or in the iron-hard fields of Holland in winter, are graphic and compelling. This personal account of a British tank commander in the battles for Normandy and the Low Countries is illustrated with archive and personal photographs, some never previously published.

Articles fundamental to the study of warfare in England and Normandy in the 11th and 12th centuries collected here in one volume. The influence of war on late Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman society was dominant and all-pervasive. Here in this book, gathered together for the first time, are fundamental articles on warfare in England and Normandy in the 11th and12th centuries, combining the work of some of the foremost scholars in the field. Redressing the tendency to study military institutions and obligations in isolation from the practice of war, equal emphasis is given both to organisation and composition of forces, and to strategy, tactics and conduct of war. The result is not only an in-depth analysis of the nature of war itself, but a study of warfare in a broader social, political and cultural context. The Themes dealt with largely span the period of the Conquest, offering an assessment of the extent to which the Norman invasion marked radical change or a degree of continuity in the composition of armies and in methods offighting. This important collection, with an introduction and select bibliography, will be is essential not simply for the student of medieval warfare, but for all studying Anglo-Norman society and its ruling warrior aristocracy whose raison d'etre was war. Contributors: NICHOLAS HOOPER, MARJORIE CHIBNALL, J.C. HOLT, J.O. PRESTWICH, R. ALLEN BROWN, JOHN GILLINGHAM, JIM BRADBURY, MATTHEW STRICKLAND, MATTHEW BENNETT.

Originally developed as a swamp rescue vehicle by millionaire philanthropists Donald and John Roebling, the LVT (Landing Vehicle, Tracked), or "Alligator," was widely used in the Allied island-hopping campaign in the Pacific during World War II. Powered by a mammoth aircraft-type engine, the LVT(4) could cross treacherous coral reefs, deep water, and swamps to land troops ashore. The LVT(4) also introduced the rear ramp, which when lowered allowed troops to rush out, rather than clamber over the tall sides as on previous models. Produced by Food Machinery Corporation (FMC), railway equipment manufacturer St. Louis Car Company, and automobile maker Graham-Paige, over 8,000 LVT(4)s were built during the war; today only a few remain. Through dozens of archival photos as well as detailed photographs of some of the finest existent examples of these vehicles, this iconic landing vehicle is explored, and its history is explained.

It is an often overlooked fact that the SS Divisions included Cavalrymen, Paratroopers, Mountain and Ski Battalions and these rare photographs illustrate the unique role played by specialist units in action.

The United States, being at peace, had not foreseen the need for a specialized tank recovery vehicle, despite the ramping-up of tank production in 1940-41. However, observation of the new world war quickly pointed to the need for such a vehicle. Armored vehicles, immobilized for any reason, were easily destroyed by opposing troops, denying the possibility for recovery and repair or even the salvaging of parts after the battle. This book chronicles the development and use of the US and British military's Sherman tank-based armored recovery vehicles.

Allan Wildman presents the first detailed study of the Army's collapse under the strains of war and of the front soldiers' efforts to participate in the Revolution.

Originally published in 1980.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The first major study of the experiences of the hundreds of thousands of African soldiers who served with the British army during the Second World War. During the Second World War over half-a-million African troops served with the British Army as combatants and non-combatants in campaigns in the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, Italy and Burma - the largest single movement of African men overseas since the slave trade. This account, based mainly on oral evidence and soldiers' letters, tells the story of the African experience of the war. It is a 'history from below' that describes how men were recruited for a war about which most knew very little. Army life exposed them to a range of new and startling experiences: new foods and forms of discipline, uniforms, machines and rifles, notions of industrial time, travel overseas, new languages and cultures, numeracy and literacy. What impact did service in the army have on African men and their families? What new skills did soldiers acquire and to what purposes were they put on their return? What was the social impact of overseas travel, and how did the broad umbrella of army welfare services change soldiers' expectations of civilian life? And what role if any did ex-servicemen play in post-war nationalist politics? In this book African soldiers describe in their own words what it was like to undergo army training, to travel on a vast ocean, to experience battle, and their hopes and disappointments on demobilisation. DAVID KILLINGRAY is Professor Emeritus of History, Goldsmiths, and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London.

Osprey's Campaign title for the Battle of Eggmuhl of the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815). In the Spring of 1809, the Austrian army, buoyant and full of new-found patriotic fervour, rolled across the frontier with Bavaria. The time had come to exact revenge for the humiliating defeat suffered at Austerlitz. But ten days later, harassed by ceaseless rain, they were streaming back from the Abens river with Napoleon in hot pursuit. Napoleon had not been in the front line when Austria had launched its campaign - and the French and their German allies had blundered backwards and forwards across the Bavarian countryside. But, with the appearance of Napoleon, Archduke Charles lost the initiative. Based for the first time upon the Austrian primary sources, this title takes the reader through the various clashes of this significant campaign.

Glenn Bugh provides a comprehensive discussion of a subject that has not been treated in full since the last century: the history of the Athenian cavalry. Integrated into a narrative history of the cavalry from the Archaic period through the Hellenistic age is a detailed analysis of a military and social organization the members of which came predominantly from the upper classes of Athens. Bugh demonstrates that this organization was not merely a military institution but an aristocratic social class with political expectations and fluctuating loyalties to the Athenian democracy. The last major work devoted exclusively to the subject appeared in French in 1886 and predated the publication of Aristotle's Constitution of the Athenians, which provides valuable information not only on the administration of the Athenian cavalry but also on the democracy that financed it. Furthermore, since the 1930s the American excavations of the Athenian marketplace and the German excavations of the ancient cemetery have yielded unparalleled epigraphical evidence pertaining to the Athenian cavalry, particularly in the areas of personnel and administration. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

In 1963 West Germany and the United States signed an agreement to develop the best tank in the world - the MBT/KPz-70. Though by 1970 this project was stopped, West Germany used the components created for the MBT/KPz-70 to develop a new main battle tank - the Leopard 2. Since 1979, when the first Leopard 2 rolled off the production line, the Leopard 2 has undergone various modifications, and has been exported to various European countries. Enhanced by Osprey's signature colour plates and cutaway artwork, this book examines the development of the Leopard 2 from the first batch to its evolution into the improved Leopard 2 A5, detailing its features and variants.

Irish troops had fought for Louis XIV in the 1670s, under Irish officers who had little choice but to fight in foreign service, with the blessing of Charles II. With the accession of James II, and the religious politics of who might earn the English crown, they became embroiled in the Jacobite succession crisis, fighting in Ireland, then sent to France under Lord Mountcashel in 1689. With the fall of Limerick in 1691, Patrick Sarsfield led the second 'flight' of 'Wild Geese' to the continent, to fight in a war for the French, against the Grand Alliance of Europe, in the vain hope that their loyalty might warrant French support in a return to Ireland under a Jacobite king. From the Nine Years War, through the War of the Spanish Succession, and beyond, their descendents would be present at Fontenoy, Culloden and in the Americas, forever destined to fight for a cause and land which had changed beyond recognition. D.P.Graham explains the origins of the brigade and its regiments, the personalities who led them and formed their reputation, and the circumstances of their final dissolution in the aftermath of French Revolution.

This new two-volume work by historian Robert Quimby presents a comprehensive and detailed analysis of military strategy, operations, and management during one of America's most neglected and least understood military campaigns, the War of 1812. With causes that can be traced to the epic contest against Napoleon in Europe beginning in 1803, the war itself was the first conducted by the young Constitutional government of the United States. Quimby demonstrates that failed American initiatives at the beginning of hostilities shattered the unrealistic optimism of the war's staunchest advocates; and while initial failures were followed by military success in 1813, whatever advantage might have been gained was soon lost to incompetent leadership. Major exceptions occurred in the Old Northwest, and in what was then the Southwest, where U.S. forces finally broke the strength of the long-successful Indian-British alliance. In retrospect, what occurred during the War of 1812 demonstrated the necessity for gaining citizen support before committing the nation to armed conflict; it also provided a series of object lessons on how not to conduct a military campaign. Finally, Quimby argues that, notwithstanding several victories at war's end, including the fabled Battle of New Orleans, American perceptions that the United States won are erroneous; at best the struggle ended in a draw. The United States Army in the War of 1812 is an up-to-date and long overdue reassessment of military actions conducted during a pivotal conflict in American history, one that shaped U.S. military doctrine for a half century.

Women, Armies, and Warfare in Early Modern Europe examines the important roles of women who campaigned with armies from 1500 to 1815. This included those notable female individuals who assumed male identities to serve in the ranks, but far more numerous and essential were the formidable women who, as women, marched in the train of armies. While some worked as full-time or part-time prostitutes, they more generally performed a variety of necessary gendered tasks, including laundering, sewing, cooking, and nursing. Early modern armies were always accompanied by women and regarded them as essential to the well-being of the troops. Lynn argues that, before 1650, women were also fundamental to armies because they were integral to the pillage economy that maintained troops in the field.

The soldiers receive the best service a historian can provide: their story is told in their own words - Guardian 'For some reason nothing seemed to happen to us at first; we strolled along as though walking in a park. Then, suddenly, we were in the midst of a storm of machine-gun bullets and I saw men beginning to twirl round and fall in all kinds of curious ways' On 1 July 1916, a continous line of British soldiers climbed out from the trenches of the Somme into No Man's Land and began to walk towards dug-in German troops armed with machine-guns. By the end of the day there were more than 60,000 British casualties - a third of them fatal. Martin Middlebrook's now-classic account of the blackest day in the history of the British army draws on official sources from the time, and on the words of hundreds of survivors: normal men, many of them volunteers, who found themselves thrown into a scene of unparalleled tragedy and horror.

The dramatic eruption of the Arab peoples from Arabia after their adoption of the Muslim faith in the 7th century remains one of the most extraordinary events in world history. By the end of that century they ruled a state that stretched from the Atlantic to India, from southern Arabia to Central Asia, covering an area far greater than that of the Roman Empire. Therefore warfare, at least among the nomadic bedouin, was a normal aspect of life. Complemented by numerous illustrations, including eight full page colour plates by Angus McBride, this detailed text by David Nicolle tells the real story of the armies of the Muslim conquest.

The AMX 13 was originally designed in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. It represents French ambitions for national resurgence and withdrawal from wartime dependence on American military technology. Being a light tank it was an ambitious and far sighted departure from conventional tank design and it found a ready export market as well as being a critical part in the French Army arsenal. Its basic hull design lent itself to the development of a vast list of variants. French designers progressively modernised, and indeed reinvented, the AMX13 and enabled it to claim to be one of the most successful armoured vehicle programmes of the post-war period. It proved its worth in numerous small wars worldwide in the service of many countries. This, the first commercially published work on the AMX13 in English, examines in detail the technical industrial and tactical story of this remarkably successful armoured fighting vehicle. The authoritative text is backed by an impressive selection of images

Germany's Tiger tank, whether in the form of the Tiger I or later Tiger II (King Tiger), was the most feared tank of WWII. Despite production totaling fewer than 2,000 units, its heavy armor, its power, and perhaps the even more powerful Nazi propaganda machine ensured that the Tiger remains well known over seven decades after last being on the battlefield. Through more than 175 photos, this volume chronicles the design, development, and deployment of this famed German tank. Full-color photographs of rare surviving examples from around the globe augment carefully selected war-era photos in bringing this tank back to life. Comprehensive tables reveal the details of performance and technical specifications of each variant. A concise, easy-to-read text and detailed photographic captions expose the secrets of this iconic tank. Part of the Legends of Warfare series.

A Black Cat Abroad is the untold WWII story of a 'Terrier' nicknamed 'Oscar': R.E.H. Hadingham (1915-2004), CBE, MC & Bar TD, better known as 'Buzzer', who was later chairman of Slazenger's and then the All England Lawn Tennis Club, Wimbledon. Beginning with his work in London and Territorial Army training, it describes life in Wimbledon under the cloud of impending war. On 29th July 1939, Buzzer was commissioned into 167 Brigade, 67th (East Surrey) Anti-Tank Regiment R.A. T.A., the 'Black Cats'. Three years later he embarked from Liverpool, carrying a sun-helmet, destination unknown. Momentous challenges followed, not least a 3-year separation from his family. Here are fresh aspects of an epic 3,000-mile journey from Iraq to action in North Africa, before conflicts in Italy: Salerno, Anzio, and the lesser-known 'Monte Cassino of the Adriatic': Gemmano. Leading toward the 80th Anniversary of the Italian Campaign (1943-1945), relevant historic anecdotes and key operational recollections reveal a young, energetic 303 Anti-Tank Battery Commander's personal perspectives, and the first officer in his Territorial Regiment to receive a batt le honour. This remarkable, first-hand account by the 'poet of Wimbledon' is intended as a special tribute to all brave men who served in the 'Black Cats' - and as a commemoration of the fallen.

What was it like to be a soldier on a Napoleonic battlefield? What happened when cavalry regiments charged directly at one another? What did the generals do during battle? Drawing on memoirs, diaries, and letters of the time, this dramatic book explores what actually happened in battle and how the participants' feelings and reactions influenced the outcome. Rory Muir focuses on the dynamics of combat in the age of Napoleon, enhancing his analysis with vivid accounts of those who were there-the frightened foot soldier, the general in command, the young cavalry officer whose boils made it impossible to ride, and the smartly dressed aide-de-camp, tripped up by his voluminous pantaloons. This book sheds new light on how military tactics worked by concentrating on the experience of soldiers in the firing line. Muir considers the interaction of artillery, infantry, and cavalry; the role of the general, subordinate commanders, staff officers, and aides; morale, esprit de corps, and the role of regimental officers; soldiers' attitudes toward death and feelings about the enemy; the plight of the wounded; the difficulty of surrendering; and the way victories were finally decided. He discusses the mechanics of musketry, artillery, and cavalry charges and shows how they influenced the morale, discipline, and resolution of the opposing armies. This is a volume that will fascinate all readers with an interest in military history, European history, or the psychology of combat.