Jake Wardrop's Diary

Jake Wardrop's Diary PDF Author: George Forty
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
ISBN: 1445623560
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
A gritty, true-life story of brutal tank warfare in the Second World War.

Jake Wardrop's Diary

Jake Wardrop's Diary PDF Author: George Forty
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
ISBN: 1445623560
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
A gritty, true-life story of brutal tank warfare in the Second World War.

Tanks Across the Desert

Tanks Across the Desert PDF Author: Jake Wardrop
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description


Desert Armour

Desert Armour PDF Author: Robert Forczyk
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472851897
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
Robert Forczyk covers the development of armoured warfare in North Africa from the earliest Anglo-Italian engagements in 1940 to the British victory over the German Afrikakorps in Operation Crusader in 1941. The war in the North African desert was pure mechanized warfare, and in many respects the most technologically advanced theatre of World War II. It was also the only theatre where for three years British and Commonwealth, and later US, troops were in constant contact with Axis forces. World War II best-selling author Robert Forczyk explores the first half of the history of the campaign, from the initial Italian offensive and the arrival of Rommel's Panzergruppe Afrika to the British Operation Crusader offensive that led to the relief of Tobruk. He examines the armoured forces, equipment, doctrine, training, logistics and operations employed by both Allied and Axis forces throughout the period, focusing especially on the brigade and regimental level of operations. Fully illustrated throughout with photographs, profile artwork and maps, and featuring tactical-level vignettes and appendices analysing tank data, tank deliveries in-theatre and orders of battle, this book goes back to the sources to provide a new study of armoured warfare in the desert.

The Sten Gun

The Sten Gun PDF Author: Leroy Thompson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1849087601
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 82

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Book Description
The Sten submachine gun – officially the 'Carbine, Machine, Sten' – was developed to fulfill the pressing British need for large quantities of cheaply produced weapons after Dunkirk, when German invasion was a very real possibility. Over four million were built during World War II, and the Sten was widely used by airborne troops, tankers, and others who needed a compact weapon with substantial firepower. It proved especially popular with Resistance fighters as it was easy to conceal, deadly at close range, and could fire captured German ammunition – with a design so simple that Resistance fighters were able to produce them in bicycle shops. Featuring vivid first-hand accounts, specially commissioned full-colour artwork and close-up photographs, this is the fascinating story of the mass-produced submachine gun that provided Allied soldiers and Resistance fighters with devastating close-range firepower.

From Tobruk to Tunis

From Tobruk to Tunis PDF Author: Neal Dando
Publisher: Helion
ISBN: 1912174421
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
This book focuses on the extent to which the physical terrain features across Egypt, Libya and Tunisia affected British operations throughout the campaign in North Africa during the Second World War. One main theme of the work analyses the terrain from the operational and tactical perspective and argues that the landscape features heavily influenced British operations and should now be considered alongside other standard military factors. The work differs from previous studies in that it considers these additional factors for the entire campaign until the Axis surrender in May 1943. Until now it has been widely assumed that much of the Western Desert coastal plateau was a broadly level, open region in which mobile armored operations were paramount. However this work concentrates on the British operations to show they were driven by the need to capture and hold key features across each successive battlefield. At the operational level planning was led by the need to hold key ground across Libya and especially the province of Cyrenaica during the crucial middle period of the campaign. A secondary theme of the work argues that British forces began to improvise certain tactical doctrines, which altered the early practice of combined arms assaults into one of the Infantry and Armored formations fighting largely separated battles until the autumn of 1942. Other developments in doctrine which were affected by the terrain included the practice of unit dispersal to hold key ground and the use of temporary units such as Jock columns to harass and engage the enemy. The two themes are inter-linked and contribute fresh insights to the debate on British methods of warfare. The author has consulted key primary documents, reports, war diaries and published memoirs, from major UK archives and compared these with the campaign historiography to develop the main themes of the work. These include the National Archives, the Churchill Archives Center, the Liddell-Hart Center for Military History, the National Army Museum, John Rylands Center, Imperial War Museum at London and Duxford and London and the Tank Museum Archives at Bovington. The sources include unit war diaries, after action reports, along with many of the key published and some unpublished memoirs. His text is supported by 24 pages of specially commissioned color maps.

Combat and Morale in the North African Campaign

Combat and Morale in the North African Campaign PDF Author: Jonathan Fennell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139496026
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
Military professionals and theorists have long understood the relevance of morale in war. Montgomery, the victor at El Alamein, said, following the battle, that 'the more fighting I see, the more I am convinced that the big thing in war is morale'. Jonathan Fennell, in examining the North African campaign through the lens of morale, challenges conventional explanations for Allied success in one of the most important and controversial campaigns in British and Commonwealth history. He introduces new sources, notably censorship summaries of soldiers' mail, and an innovative methodology that assesses troop morale not only on the evidence of personal observations and official reports but also on contemporaneously recorded rates of psychological breakdown, sickness, desertion and surrender. He shows for the first time that a major morale crisis and stunning recovery decisively affected Eighth Army's performance during the critical battles on the Gazala and El Alamein lines in 1942.

Leakey's Luck

Leakey's Luck PDF Author: Lieutenant Colonel George Forty OBE
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 180399133X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Major General Rea Leakey was one of the Royal Tank Regiment's greatest heroes of the Second World War. As a young tank commander, he fought Rommel's Afrika Korps in the Western Desert of Egypt, before becoming trapped for six months in the siege of Tobruk and temporarily joining the Australian infantry as an honorary Lance Corporal. He later returned to the European theatre in 1944 and served as a Churchill tank commander in Normandy, the Rhine and Germany. Despite it being strictly forbidden, Leakey kept a diary throughout his soldiering career. Based on this valuable account, Leakey's Luck documents Leakey's wartime service in its entirety, and offers a view of the war through the eyes of a man who was there at the 'sharp end'. Many of his exploits were hair-raising, some even too fantastic to believe. Incredibly, Leakey's luck held out throughout the war, and he remained in the British Army until retirement in 1968.

Armoured Warfare

Armoured Warfare PDF Author: Alaric Searle
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1441158057
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
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.

Browned Off and Bloody-minded

Browned Off and Bloody-minded PDF Author: Alan Allport
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300170750
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
More than three-and-a-half million men served in the British Army during the Second World War, the vast majority of them civilians who had never expected to become soldiers and had little idea what military life, with all its strange rituals, discomforts, and dangers, was going to be like. Alan Allport's rich and luminous social history examines the experience of the greatest and most terrible war in history from the perspective of these ordinary, extraordinary men, who were plucked from their peacetime families and workplaces and sent to fight for King and Country. Allport chronicles the huge diversity of their wartime trajectories, tracing how soldiers responded to and were shaped by their years with the British Army, and how that army, however reluctantly, had to accommodate itself to them. Touching on issues of class, sex, crime, trauma, and national identity, through a colorful multitude of fresh individual perspectives, the book provides an enlightening, deeply moving perspective on how a generation of very modern-minded young men responded to the challenges of a brutal and disorienting conflict.

Desert Rats at War

Desert Rats at War PDF Author: George Forty
Publisher: Air Sea Media
ISBN: 0957691556
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
70 years ago, on 7 June 1944, the British 7th Armored Division landed in Normandy, halfway through a wartime journey that had started in north Africa. Formed on 16 February 1940, it adopted the Jerboa as its divisional signÑand while many units that fought in the desert call themselves by the name, 7th Armoured Division are the original ÔDesert RatsÕ. The division helped destroy the Italian Tenth Army at Beda Fomm on 7 February 1941, defeat the Desert?FoxÑRommelÑat El Alamein in October 1942, and drive Axis forces out of North?Africa. After the desert, 7th Armored Division landed at Salerno on 15 September 1943, in time to help repulse concerted German counterattacks, beforeÑas part of U.S. Fifth ArmyÕs British X CorpsÑit took Naples and crossed the Volturno. Pulled out of Italy, it reached England in January 1944 where it prepared to enter the Northwestern European theater at Gold Beach from 7 June, equipped with the new Cromwell and the Sherman Firefly. The division had difficulties in Normandy, particularly at Villers-Bocage, and suffered the ignominy of having its GOCÑGeorge ErskineÑand a number of officers sacked and moved to other positions. Erskine was replaced by Gerald Lloyd Verney on 4 August 1944. He helped reinstill confidence and discipline to the division which took part in the Allied liberation of France and Belgium, entering Ghent in September. Verney was, in turn, replaced by Lewis Lyne in November 1944 and Lyne led the division on their final advance through Holland and into Germany. The Desert Rats ended the war with the liberation of Hamburg on 3 May 1945 after one of the most remarkable military journeys in history and was chosen to take part in the Allied victory parade held in Berlin on 21 July 1945. Winston Churchill recognized the achievements of the division when he spoke at the opening of a soldiersÕ club in Berlin: ÔDear Desert Rats! May your glory ever shine! May your laurels never fade! May the memory of this glorious pilgrimage of war which you have made from Alamein, via the Baltic to Berlin never die!Õ Desert Rats at War is an evocation of what it was like to serve with the division, in the African desert and Europe, from the first encounters by the Mobile Force in 1940 to Berlin in 1945. Full of eyewitness accounts and private photos, Desert Rats at War has been completely revised and updated, with additional text, maps and photographs.