Page 94 - History of War - Issue 25-16

REVIEWS

TANK 100 YEARS OF THE WORLD’S

MOST IMPORTANT ARMOURED

RECOMMENDEDREADING MILITARY VEHICLE

Writer: Michael E Haskew Publisher: Zenith Press Price: £25 Released: Out now
NAGASAKI: LIFE AFTER
NUCLEAR WAR EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT TANKS PRESENTED IN A GLOSSY, PHOTO-RICH
Focusing on the lives of PACKAGE – IT’S PANZER PARADISE IN BOOK FORM!
i ve Nagasaki citizens
affected by the atomic Like most great ideas, the concept of an Of course, Lord Kitchener was wrong, and
bomb, this book recounts armoured i ghting vehicle has been around for Michael E Haskew’s coffee table-style book is
the details of that fateful centuries. Leonardo da Vinci is largely credited an encyclopedic history of all things tank, both
day as well as looking at with coming up with the idea over 500 years ago, before and since Kitchener’s wildly inaccurate
the repercussions it had on paper at least. While the idea of caterpillar prediction. Via an engaging narrative that’s
for the city, its people and tracks was i rst dreamt up in the 1770s by a supported throughout with glossy photography
the world. Miles away from British inventor called Richard Lovell Edgeworth. and illustrations, we’re shown not just how such
previous drab accounts of It wasn’t until halfway through World War machines have won wars, but become integral
the events in Nagasaki, the I, however, that the technology became to our culture.
real-life stores keep you hooked from the start to available to build an all-terrain vehicle capable Not surprisingly, we get a comprehensive
the very end. of transporting men and weaponry across a account of developments in tank technology
battlei eld behind the protection of armour down the decades. Starting with the early slow-
NORTH MEN: THE VIKING SAGA plating. Even then, the i rst designs, created by moving behemoths such as the British Mark 1
793-1241 AD the British military, were far from perfect. Under prototype (based around a tractor, it had a top
Taking a path less travelled orders from Winston Churchill (then i rst lord speed of just two miles an hour) the book takes
by not just beginning in of the Admiralty) to create a battleship for the us right through to the high-speed, high-tech
Lindisfarne (although land, or a ‘landship’, the earliest incarnations killing machines of the modern battlei eld.
events here are covered), of what came to be called tanks were shonky to Along the way, we are expertly guided through
North Men looks at the say the least. Lacking both proper suspension its most famous appearances in battle, from
evolution of civilisations and ventilation, they were dangerous and its debut on the Somme in 1916 to the role it
in Scandinavia, with a even potentially lethal to those who operated played in toppling Saddam in the two Gulf Wars,
sprinkling of mythology them. Indeed some remained convinced via the monumental clashes at El Alamein and
thrown in for good measure. that these new-fangled tanks were nothing Kursk during World War II.
In terms of Viking activity, more than a gimmick. After witnessing an What is less expected is the book’s
Haywood aims to give the early demonstration of the i rst tank, General fascinating exploration of other aspects, such
reader a full picture of the Viking age, charting all Kitchener, then Britain’s secretary of state for as recruitment and propaganda posters, arms
their exploits from England, France, the Balkans, war and the country’s most famous soldier, manufacturers’ advertising spiel, and even the
Asia, the Mediterranean and beyond. dismissed what he’d seen as a “mechanical role tanks have played in cinema. As dip-in/dip-
toy”, before declaring that “war would never be out reads go, this is both highly informative and
WARS AND BATTLES OF THE won by such machines.” immensely entertaining.
ROMAN REPUBLIC
Before the days of Pax
Romana, the Roman
Republic was in an almost
constant state of warfare.
As it expanded its territory,
many a battle was fought
on land and at sea against
the likes of the Gauls,
the Etruscans and the
Carthaginians. Chrystal
takes on the task of
describing and explaining
100 key battles from the struggle to dominate Italy in
753 BCE to the days of Julius Caesar in 100 BCE.
ZEMKE’S
WOLFPACK
At a time when the USA had
no real air force to speak of,
the American 56th Fighter
Group, as part of the RAF,
were a ighter unit to be feared by the Germans. With
a foreword by the son of the eponymous Colonel
Zemke himself, this work charts the day-to-day of
the 56th in more than 400 captioned photographs
drawn from archives and rare personal collections. The
photographs are as fascinating as the stories of the
ground crew, trainers and pilots are unique.

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