Military

The Stryker interim combat vehicle was a stop-gap measure, designed to meet the needs of the United States to project its military force quickly by air into hotspots around the world. In 2003 it had its baptism of fire in Iraq and has since proved itself an integral part of the US's warfighting capability and now, two decades into its service, the Stryker has been adapted to face the new threat of a resurgent Russia. This volume in the Land Craft series of modelling guides examines the Stryker a...

This latest LandCraft title looks at the design and development of the Land Rover as well as the military specific variants designed and built, including the famous SAS Pink Panther, the nimble Light Weight and powerful Forward Control gun tractor. The title will also look at those key conversions that took place on standard Land Rovers throughout the duration of its life span. From the humble beings of the box like Series 1 to the formidable firepower and pace of the WOLF WMIK, the Land Rover w...

Norman Hall enlisted as a private in Liverpool in September 1914, becoming an officer with the Lancashire Fusiliers in Bury about a month later. He went to France with the 2/5th Lancashire Fusiliers in May 1915. This version of his diaries focuses on the 2/5th training, deployment in the trenches, and the Battle of the Somme. An Afterword summarises Normans later service with the 1/5th Lancashire Fusiliers. Norman was naturally observant, and took a keen interest in his surroundings, his compa...

Contains a plethora of colour photos. Content covers history, walkaround, interior-detail, engine detail and chassis detail.

Subjected to international sanctions due to its policies of racial segregation, known as Apartheid, South Africa was cut off from sources of major arms systems from 1977. Over the following years, the country became involved in the war in Angola, which gradually grew in ferocity and converted into a conventional war. With the available equipment being ill-suited to the local, hot, dry and dusty climate, and confronted with the omnipresent threat of land mines, the South Africans began researchi...

In the second volume of the Italienfeldzug series an exhaustive study of the ground operations and the most important vehicles fielded by the German army in the Italian campaign, between 1943 and 1945, from the Allied invasion of Sicily to the capitulation of the Third Reich. The authors describe the German Army vehicles in detail, making extensive use of significant and in some cases unpublished photographs from a wide range of sources, including photos from official German and Allied archives ...

The war between the Soviet Union and Finland in 1941-44 is much less known in the West and in Russia than the Winter War 1939-40. For Finland the Continuation War is one of cornerstones of national identity. The Vyborg offensive, the battle that ended this war, is described very differently in Russian and Finnish literature. This book attempts to provide an extensive description of the build-up and course of the battle as well as the diplomatic games that lay behind it, including role of the Teh...

The Sdkfz 251 halftrack was one of the most versatile armoured vehicles produced by either side in the Second World War. Designed by the firm of Hannoversche Maschinenbau AG, or Hanomag, production ran to over 15,000 vehicles and it was eventually built as twenty-three separate variants serving as not only a personnel carrier, but also a command vehicle, mobile rocket launcher, armoured ambulance and bridge-layer. We examines the Sdkfz 251 variants armed with the 7.5cm gun, initially used as an ...

Kampfgruppe Mühlenkamp presents for the first time a sequential series of photos taken by Waffen-SS war correspondent Ernst Baumann in Eastern Poland during a two week period in July 1944. At this time the 5. SS-Panzer Division Wiking was engaged in counter-attacks against Soviet armoured and cavalry forces following their crushing defeat of Army Group Center in Belarus during the Red Army’s Operation Bagration summer offensive. These stunning images of the Waffen-SS Wiking Division and Germania...

This illustrated book is the first comprehensive reference work covering winter uniforms used by the German Army, Air Force and Waffen-SS during the period from 1942 to 1945. The book is intended for collectors, historians, model makers and those with an interest in military history. Following the attack on the Soviet Union and the first experiences with the Russian winter in 1941-42, it quickly became clear to the powers that be standard German Army uniform was completely unsuitable for waging ...

The Red Army reached north eastern Rumania in the last days of March 1944. Stalin had high hopes that the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts would be able to quickly conquer the Balkans. But those hopes were not to be fulfilled. Bulgarian researcher Kamen Nevenkin From Bessarabia to Belgrade covers the military history of the bloody fights in south eastern Europe from March to October 1944. This is a short study, illustrated with numerous never-before-published wartime photographs.

The Soviet Vienna Operation began on 16 March 1945 when the assault armies of 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts succeeded in penetrating the Axis defence between Esztergom and Lake Balaton. It ended less than a month later, on 13 April 1945, when all its objectives were achieved, and Vienna was taken. The defeat at Vienna inflicted a mortal blow on the Nazi economy – the Third Reich lost its important economic regions in Hungary and Eastern Austria that were still largely untouched by the war. Finall...