Customer Reviews

M109 155mm Self-Propelled Howitzer 1960-2005 (New Vanguard)

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this book offers a short summary of the m109 worldwide service and history. It doesn't go into ammunitions, structure, use and so on.

You know what you are buying when you purchase a New Vanguard series of books, the M109 155mm SPH is no exception. It has to be short, it is not meant to be an exhaustive study. I think it is an excellent balance of history of the development of Self Propelled Artillery for the US Army.

Author Steven Zaloga traces the history of mechanized artillery from WW2 to the present. Great B&W photos, color drawings, line drawings. It has varients used by other countries. I learned a lot from the pages discussing camoflague, paint patterns that I did not know before - just a small example of what can be found in this book.

I have always wanted Osprey to improve the cut away drawing in the middle of the book, something always seems to be left out. The author even admits there is not much published upon which to reference, other than the work covered by R.P. Hunnicutt's book Sheridan.

This is a great book for modlers and enthusiasts as well. I think it is a good buy for the price.

If one is interested in getting a very short overview of the vehicle in an hour's of reading this book does its job. It provides decent history of vehicle, its development and variants but is quite weak in terms of its discussion of performance of vehicle and its strengths and weaknesses. No discussion of vehicle relative to non-U.S. counterparts hence one really does not get a grasp of how this vehicle stands up to the competition.