Customer Reviews

Gettysburg July 2 1863: Union: The Army of the Potomac (Order of Battle)

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To fully appreciate the second day of fighting of Gettysburg, you need this volume to see the battle from the Federal perspective. Details not found in the Confederate volume are found here. This volume show well the advantage the Federals had with interior lines. It also appears not to have the layout mistakes which plague the Confederate volume. The only detail that appears to be overlooked, in contrast to the Confederate volumes in the set, are Federal regimental flags. This, however, is a small oversight, and is made up, in part, by including each of the Federal corps's respective divisional badges. All in all, considering the amount of detail that is provided, Jim Arnold and Rebecca Wiener's work is phenomenal and well worth buying.

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 Civil War Battle of Gettysburg. This seventh volume (the Gettysburg books do not appear sequentially in the series) is devoted to the disposition of the Union Army of the Potomac under General George Meade on July 2, 1863, while the sixth volume performs the same function for the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee. All of the books in this series provide comprehensive organization diagrams, an analysis of operational objectives, and most importantly where each unit was at what point during the second day of the battle, including both the "tooth" combat elements and the vital "tail" support troops. The operational analysis is quite excellent and surprisingly concise, although for the second day at Gettysburg this is obviously of more importance from the Confederate perspective. Still, there is the almost fatal mistake of Sickels' III Corps stupidly moving forward on the Union side of the ledger. The book provides dozens of photographs, charts and detailed maps and I would have to think that 99% of all Civil War buffs are going to find lots of new information in these pages about the most analyzed battle of the Civil War.

But while this material will be on interest to those who want to study what happened in Gettysburg in minute detail, I think the greatest utility of this volume will be for war gamming enthusiasts, who want to be able to position troops accurately for recreating the situation and trying to achieve a different objective. I have used the information to generate a brigade level version of the Battle of Gettysburg with the Civil War 2 computer game and I suspect it would be of even greater use to those who have the massive Gettysburg board game and want to give Lee another chance at taking the Union flanks on Day 2. Of course, the Confederate commander is going to try and avoid the long list of mistakes made that day and the Union commander is going to have to anticipate that the flank attack on Little Round Top is not going to be botched, otherwise Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the 20th Maine are never going to hold the Union left. However, others will certainly be impressed with the depth of detail provided in these pages. 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 1759 Battle of Quebec (interesting choice) and the WWII Battle of the Ardennes in 1944 (i.e., the Battle of the Bulge).