Steven Zaloga offers up a rigorous and absorbing study of the first major Allied operation in Normandy after the D-Day landings - the capture of Cherbourg. Blending expert analysis, specially commissioned artwork and illustrative maps, this book tells the story of the bitter struggle to capture this[...]

The US Tank Destroyer program was introduced as a cost-effective way of dealing with German armour. As opposed to most of the other combatant powers of WWII, the US did not want to use its tank battalions to confront opposing armour. Rather, specialised tank destroyer battalions, both towed and self[...]

The Rhine River represented the last natural defensive barrier for the Third Reich in the fall of 1944. Although Hitler had been reluctant to allow the construction of tactical defense lines in France, the final defense of the Reich was another matter. As a result, construction of a Rhine defense li[...]

The T-26 was the first major Soviet armour program of the 1930s, beginning as a license-built version of the British Vickers 6-ton export tank. Although the T-26 retained the basic Vickers hull and suspension, the Red Army began to make extensive changes to the turret and armament, starting with the[...]

The first prototype for the LVT (Landing Vehicle Tracked) was completed in July 1941, its design based on the Alligator, a tracked amphibious vehicle developed for rescue operations in the swamps of Florida. Though the early conception of amtrac operations envisioned using LVTs solely as supply vehi[...]

As the Allies attempted to break out of Normandy, it quickly became apparent that there would be no easy victory over the Germans, and that every scrap of territory on the way to Berlin would have to be earned through hard fighting. This study concentrates on the ferocious battles between the German[...]

The coastal defenses in Normandy along the D-Day beaches were less thorough than other Atlantic Wall defenses, such as the Pas de Calais, where the Germans expected the main attack. However, they still proved to be formidable obstacles for the Allied invasion force. Rommel stressed the need to defea[...]

The HMMWV has set the world standard for army tactical vehicles, since its introduction into the US Army in the 1980s. The Humvee marks another step in the evolution of small tactical vehicles, first started by the legendary Jeep of World War II. Modern armies have a need for a larger vehicle able t[...]

Germany's Atlantic Wall was the most ambitious military fortification program of World War II. Following its conquest of Western Europe, Germany had to defend some 5,000km of Atlantic coastline from the Spanish border to the Arctic Circle. The United States' entry into the war and the inevitability [...]

"Eisenhower".

Although US and Japanese tank forces first clashed in 1941, it was on in 1944 that tank-vs-tank action became more common as both sides poured larger numbers of tanks into the combat zone. These battles were a means of demonstrating each side's latest tank technology. For the US, the pinnacle of the[...]

Stalin's Red Army entered the Second World War as a relatively untried fighting force. In 1941, with the launch of Operation 'Barbarossa', it joined the battle with Hitler's army, the most powerful in history. After a desperate war of attrition over four years, the Red Army defeated the Nazis on the[...]

* An exploration of the U.S. Army Tank combat that played a vital role in the wining of World War II The tank played a key role in many of the battles of World War II; it was an indispensable weapon that could halt entire armies and wreak havoc on the battlefield. Early in the war it was the German[...]