Customer Reviews

M50A1 Ontos - Detail In Action No. 1

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Certainly one of the oddest looking armored vehicles ever. Appropriate name, Ontos is Greek for "Thing". 297 were built in the late 1950's. The Army rejected them and the Marines got them. Designed for anti-tank warfare, they were used successfully in Vietnam to help the Marines as antipersonnel weapons. Six 106mm recoiless rifles + .50 caliber spotting rifles and .30 cal MG could do that quickly.

This book has just enough narrative to be of help to the reader. The real story lies in the photographs. 70 pages mostly color shots, up close and absolutely perfect for a modeler. Every angle, aspect and feature are captured here.

What's not to like? The captions are sometimes confusing, but it can be hard to describe what you're looking at unless you know something about the vehicle. This does not detract at all from the book.

This book fills a void on this small, footnote of armored warfare that has been barely mentioned elsewhere. Absolutely recommended for anyone building a model on this thing, or those tread heads that love to study everything armor.

Buyers should beware of the title. The term "In Action" is applied very loosly in this case. Like many of the Squadron Signals books this is an ideal reference for modelers, filled with high quality color photos of surviving examples (though sadly, not the prototype in Indiana). It also has some information and photos of the development and production of the Ontos. What's missing is the "action" part. Apart from some b&w photos of Ontos being driven onto Vietnamese beaches there's precious little covering combat operations, and nothing about victories/losses, or first hand accounts of combat with the Ontos. That will have to wait for a more complete volume.