Customer Reviews

Tanks of World War Two

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I also have the original French edition. I do not take issue with this book for not being an encyclopedic compilation or history of AFV's because it was clearly written with the modeller in mind. However, given this, Restayn needed to do more careful editing of his designations and identification of individual variants. I personally wrote up a four page list of corrections to enclose with my copy! By way of illustration: The Shermans illustrated on pages 108,p.110, p.112, p.113, p.114, p.115, p.131, p.132, p.134, p. 135 and p.142, all purportedly various 75mm gun Sherman variants, especially the M-4A3 variant, are in fact M-4's, particularly the side profiles. The only sure way to tell are the engine deck details (refer to line drawings, and overhead photos in Hunnicutt's "Sherman"). Restayn uses for the most part this same side profile for all his 75mm gunned Shermans, except for the M4A4 which is correctly identified mostly (except on p.113, M4A4's ID'd as M-4's this time! On p. 114 is an M-4A1 in the top profile, not an M-4, and this being the easiest of the 75mm gunned Shermans to tell apart from the others.) The expert eye will notice other gaffes on various other pages. Otherwise, once the vehicles have been properly ID'd the drawings are valuable for their usually good detail, and their color. Just don't rely on them to properly ID a particular variant.

Great art work but no technical or historical data except for a few comments about the time and place where each of the individual machines represented was in action. The fine drawings are taken from a quarterly magazine devoted to the main ww2 land campaigns. I bought the french (original) version by mail and was disappointed not to find the encyclopedia I expected. Still a good buy for modellers.

The armored forces of the North African and European theaters are depicted in 390 color paintings of tanks and related vehicles. Units from the United States, Britain, France, the Soviet Union, Italy and Germany all receive extensive coverage.

I use this book as a guide line for my period painting of scale models of armoured vehicles of World War Two. The paintings in this book are of great detail and cover both the early and later parts of the war. Most of the vehicle paintings are accompanied by smaller pictures showing details of unit insignia and alternate turrets and other fittings.

This is not a technical manual of the vehilces. It is more of a catalog of the camouflage schemes used during the period. A large aid for the modeller.

Over one hundred pages of color painting of tanks alone worth the money. I did notice a few errors (and I am no expert like the other raters), but they do not depreciate the nice pictures.