Landships II

The David Fletcher books are excellent. I found the A7V book very boring (just my opinion), and was glad that I didn't buy it merely borrowed it from the library.

A New Excalibur that Gwyn recommends is indeed an excellent book, but it does have a drawback for newcomers to WW1 armour; many of the photos are wrongly captioned. Tanks that are clearly a Mark III (it has the biggest collection of photos of Mark III tanks) are labelled as Mark I. But the text is a very good read.

I would add, 'The Boilerplate War' by John Foley, and 'Tank Warfare' by Frank Mitchell.

Logbook Of A Pioneer can be downloaded (or read online) here:
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=logbook%20of%20a%20pioneer

And check out the Project Gutenberg WW1 bookshelf:
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/World_War_I_(Bookshelf)

philthydirtyanimal wrote:

---

...

Logbook Of A Pioneer can be downloaded (or read online) here:
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=logbook%20of%20a%20pioneer

And check out the Project Gutenberg WW1 bookshelf:
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/World_War_I_(Bookshelf)

---

PDA, you are a resoureful fella!

Many thanks.

*edit

Where would be the best place to find Swinton's A Handbook on Machine Gun Tactics from 1911, which he wrote along with Capt R.V.K. Applin, 14th Kings Hussars?

-- Edited by Oscar Zulu on Saturday 9th of January 2010 02:05:56 PM

Some great resources there. Many thanks.

If I might offer an opinion.

It was A New Excalibur (1986) that rekindled my interest in WWI AFV's after a prolonged break. Extremely well written and by no means without humour. It is comparatively uncritical of Albert Stern, who seems to have been a bit of a handful.

The Devil's Chariots, which tells virtually the same story, appeared only 15 years later. In my view, it spends rather too long on the Dunkirk Squadron, which was, after all, a dead end, but it does the job.

Then there's A Band of Brigands (2008) by Christy Campbell, which we discussed recently. Again, the timetable of events is very similar, and the use of personal accounts and reference to official documents is impressive, but Mr. Campbell makes the puzzling decision to concentrate in his opening chapter on the suicide of a Tank officer, which one tends to assume is going to be somehow central to the book, but then it isn't. Unfortunately, the book also contains a considerable number of minor historical inaccuracies that the more seasoned enthusiast will spot.

David Fletcher's Landships (1984, and apparently reissued in 1996) is a useful introduction, but his The British Tanks 1915-19 (2001) is a big improvement on it, including such things as the Newton Cargo Carrier, more on the Tanks in the Middle East, etc.

Then there is Tanks: A Peripheral Weapon? by David Childs (1990). Hideously expensive, this tells the story of the origins only briefly but goes into the tactical and supply aspects in very great detail. There are not many laughs, but it's a fascinating book. It is sympathetic towards Stern, but does not hesitate to point out that he did not have a low opinion of himself.

And there is Tank: The Progress of a Monstrous War Machine by Patrick Wright, a candidate for Pseuds' Corner if ever there was one. An arty-farty treatise on the symbolism of the tank throughout its history. However, the earlier part is quite interesting, describing the origins fairly thoroughly and including quite a lot on the work of Solomon J. Solomon, who was, if you like, the father of camouflage. Call me a Philistine, but Mr. Wright disappears up his own backside at an early stage. Not worth buying, but worth reading the first 100 (of the 500) pages if you can get hold of a copy. (He even includes a dozen words on the officer's suicide that so interested Christy Campbell) You can read about it here: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n22/peter-wollen/tankishness although the first sentence might raise an eyebrow. If you've ever worried that you don't know enough about the connection between Tanks and the Cubist art movement, this is the book for you.

All the above are written from an almost entirely British point of view, and although the A7V (naturally) gets a good mention from Messrs. Smithers, Fletcher, Glanfield, and Campbell, references to the French can be counted on two hands. It depends whether by "early armored warfare" you mean  just the British side.

Luckily, there are plenty of works on French tank development. These books are recent and very good http://www.activeboard.com/forum.spark?aBID=63528&p=3&topicID=25899370

There's also this on the Renault FT http://www.minitracks.fr/renault-FT17.htm

In addition, our friend François Vauvillier has recently written several articles on French Tanks and other tracked vehicles of the period in Tank Zone and GBM magazines.

PDA is correct about M Hundleby's book on the A7V being more of a reference work than an entertaining read, but it is undeniably thorough.

As far as the Americans are concerned, Treat 'Em Rough by Dale Wilson is the only exhaustive account that I know of. The first half is highly interesting, with some startling descriptions of the Americans' failure to get their tank programme off the ground. The second half is a bit dreary.

For Russia, the only work that goes much beyond the Vezdekhod and Tsar Tank is John Milsom's Russian tanks 1900-1970.

If pressed, I would suggest that, if you are only interested in the British aspect, A New Excalibur is the most entertaining, and David Fletcher's The British Tanks 1915-19 the best factual account.

The trouble is that, in no small part thanks to various contributors to this Forum, our knowledge has overtaken some of the things described in one or two of the above books. [In British and German Tanks of World War 1 (1968) Ellis and Chamberlain say that "it is not known whether any German World War I Tanks have been preserved"] Christy Campbell says his interest began with the discovery of Deborah at Flesquieres, whereas some of us had already been enthusiasts for thirty years before then. Some of these authors write books on numerous topics, and they might have started from scratch, done their research, and written the book in 6 or 12 months. Some of us have had decades' headstart on them. (To be fair, David Childs says his book took him ten years)

With that reservation in mind, I would say that the best all-round book on the subject, if you can get hold of it, is the collection of 1970s Profile Publications, published as one volume as Armoured Fighting Vehicles of the World: Volume 1 by Cannon Books. It's not without what we now know to be mistakes, but it covers all the combatant nations and is a good basis for further study.

Almost all of the above are out of print, but they can be found on the Internet, and there's always the library. (I was lucky; I bought A New Excalibur hardback for £10 at the now defunct Ceasefire Wargames Fair, and The British Tanks 1915-19 for less than half price at Bovington, and found Landships and A New Excalibur paperback side-by-side in a second-hand bookshop. I've had to shell out a good few quid for some others)

Good hunting.

The views expressed above are not necessarily anyone else's. Pls feel free to argue.

-- Edited by James H on Monday 11th of January 2010 06:23:42 PM

While we are this subject. Is there any specific book dealing with what I would call "pre-20th century" mobile armour design ? I have bits dealing in the subject in many books but nothing really focused... which is both costly and leaves gaps in the story (was there a project/realisation of an armoured chariot -with the horses pushing it from the rear- during the USCW ?)

JCC