Customer Reviews

Modern U.S. Military Vehicles (Crestline Series)

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4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

An excellent scource for information on some of the lesser known vehicles in the US inventory. Good pictures although lacking in text and technical data. As a battle simulation instructor for the US Army one needs to have up to date reference material and this book will definately help me with my job.As this book shows the armed forces use a lot of equipment and it is hard to keep it straight even when you work on it on a day to day basis. So this is a valuable assest.

As a Computer Combat Simulations Analyst who recreates units and equipment on a simulation training model for the US Army Reserve and National Guard - I find this book a handy reference to create workaround vehicles not able to be replicated by my database. In such cases, visuals of similar equipment are invaluable.

My only criticism stems from the work related uses I need this book for. The MIXING of competitors prototypes with actually accepted models of (especially) support vehicles is mildly annoying. Ditto for historical items no longer in the current inventory. Putting these units in their own chapters - dividing by service - would make this book even more valuable for me as a user.

Other than Janes' series ($$$$) which my company isn't about to pay for - this is one of the few available volumes that has visuals on current Army support, engineering vehicles, specialty vehicles and truck, tanker, cargo and utility vehicles.

As a suggestion, the Army also owns logistics boats of 300'+ length in it's Transportation Co and Bn's - putting them in would be very entertaining for the casual reader.

Good book. Buy it, use it and enjoy it!

Mr. Crismon's Modern US Military Vehicles is a fun book to browse through. However, its technical information and photographic quality is disappointing. This book does not compare favorably to the 2 previous books in this series, the wonderfully informative- US Military Wheeled Vehicles and US Military Tracked Vehicles.

If you are into military wheel vehicles, then this book is ok. I'm not into motorcycles, fire engines, dump trucks and cargo vehicles. Even then, the author tries to cover too much for this short book.

There are no color photos, no line diagrams. Very little time or space devoted to tanks, or armor vehicles. 17 pages to be exact.

I bought this thinking it would have more coverage about the M-8 Armor Gun System. It does have some photos and brief descriptions of some unusual military vehicles, but I cannot recommend this book.

I found this product to be highly entertaining because I'm a fan of picture-oriented books with lengthy, descriptive captions. Obviously, if extensive technical details are what you're looking for then this is not the item for you but this book's format makes it immensely useful for visual recognition of the subject matter with the details provided in the expanded captions. My only caveat is that, while the author is undeniably extremely knowledgable about military motor vehicles, his expertise obviously does not extend to air- and sea-based equipment as shown by the following examples.

1. The caption for the top photograph on page 136 has three (3) errors:

A. The reference to the "C5 Galaxie" is wrong because (1) the aircraft's designation has a hyphen between the "C" and the "5" ("C-5" is the correct format) and (2) the aircraft's name is misspelled ("Galaxy" is the correct spelling).

B. The reference to "Rhein-Main AFB, Germany" is incorrect because the U.S. Air Force has no "Air Force Base" on foreign soil (an "AFB" can only be on U.S. territory). The correct reference is Rhein-Main AB [Air Base], not AFB.

2. The caption for the top photograph on page 139 has one error:

The reference to the "C5A Galaxy" is wrong for the same reason as on page 136 - the aircraft's designation has a hyphen between the "C" and the "5A" ("C-5A" is the correct format). Oddly, the aircraft's name is spelled correctly ("Galaxy") in this caption.

The lack of a hyphen when referencing the C-5 may be because the author is conditioned to the Army's method of designating vehicles which is without a hyphen and he simply wasn't paying attention during his research. I'm at a loss to explain why the C-5's "offical popular name" (nickname) is spelled two different ways but his editor can share some of the blame for that since it was his/her job to ensure uniformity in spelling, even if it's the wrong spelling due to ignorance.

3. The caption for the photograph on page 141 has one especially egregious error and one claim that needs verifying:

A. This is only the second time in my extensive reading of military/naval history over the last 30+ years where I've seen an author translate the letters "CV" as "Carrier Vessel." This is incorrect because, although some U.S. Navy ship descriptions and designations have a direct relationship to each other (for example, an LSD is indeed a "Landing Ship, Dock"), in the vast majority of cases, including "CV," this is not true. In the U.S. Navy, the official description for a ship with the designation "CV" is "Multi-purpose Aircraft Carrier" [SECNAVINST 5030.8], not "Carrier Vessel." In addition, the website link below will very specifically verify that a CVCC is an "Aircraft Carrier Crash Crane" and NOT a "Carrier Vessel Crash Crane."

[Since the website link I originally listed here was deleted by Amazon, the way to reach it is to use a search engine with the key words "CVCC" and "crash crane" and then click on the link for "Approved Navy Training System Plan A/S 32A-35 Aircraft Carrier . . ." This is on the Global Security organization website and should be the fourth link listed.]

The curious part of this is how he translated AACC correctly as "Amphibious Assault Crash Crane" but not CVCC since both acronyms are verifiable from the same source. He may have, instead of researching the acronyms, simply guessed at the translation and managed to get one right.

B. The item that needs verifying is whether the ship in the photograph is actually the Amphibious Assault Ship (General Purpose) USS Saipan (LHA-2) when that ship could neither launch nor recover (no catapult or arresting gear) the aircraft pictured, a McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II. One possibility is this was for some sort of in-port static display with the aircraft craned on and off the ship for that purpose.

I attempted to contact the author via the publisher but there was no response to my first e-mail forwarded to him and the publisher refused to forward further inquiries as a matter of policy so any explanation for the discrepancies will remain unknown for now. To reiterate, despite the noted flaws, I highly recommend this book.