Customer Reviews

Gettysburg July 3 1863: Confederate: The Army of Northern Virginia (Order of Battle)

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The Osprey Order of Battle series presents the military enthusiast with a microanalysis of famous battles, in this case devoting six volumes to the pivotal three-day Civil War Battle of Gettysburg. This tenth volume in the series (the Gettysburg books do not appear sequentially) is devoted to the disposition of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia on July 3, 1863, while the seventh volume does the same for Meade's entrenched Army of the Potomac. This book provides comprehensive organization diagrams, an analysis of operational objectives, and most importantly where each unit was at what point during the final day of this pivotal battle, including both the "tooth" combat elements and the vital "tail" support troops. The operational analysis is quite excellent and surprisingly concise, albeit more so from the Confederate perspective than the Union. Included are dozens of detailed maps, charts and photographs, which provide new insights into this most analyzed Civil War battle.

While all this detailed information will be on great interest to those who want to study what happened in Gettysburg in minute detail, I really think the chief utility of this particular volume is for the war gamming enthusiast who wants to give Pickett's Charge a second chance at taking the Bloody Angle on Cemetery Ridge. I have used these books to create a brigade level version of the Battle of Gettysburg using Sierra's Civil War 2 computer game and I suspect it would be of even greater use to those who have the massive Gettysburg board game. I have found that not only can you give Lee a second chance to break the Union center, but you can also play out a counterattack by Meade that might destroy the Army of Northern Virginia effectively end the Civil War in time for the Fourth of July in 1863. The Order of Battle books meet their objective in providing the most detailed information ever published about the great battles of history. In addition to Gettysburg this series has also covered the French & Indian War Battle of Quebec in 1759 and the World War II German counter-offensive at the Battle of the Ardennes in 1944. It will be interesting to see what this series tackles next, although the Battle of Waterloo seems an obvious choice.