Series: New Vanguard

Illustrated with original artwork and archive photos, this is the history of Germany's extensive use of captured tanks in World War II. In Beutepanzers of World War II, Steven J. Zaloga, one of the world's leading armour authorities, uncovers the history of one of the least-known aspects of Germany's World War II Panzers: the extensive use of captured armoured vehicles,...

The Covenanter (which never saw active service) and Crusader Cruiser tanks were developed between 1939 and 1940. The Crusader first saw action in the North African desert in June 1941: its speed and sleek design made it a hard target to hit, and the tank was well-respected by the Afrikakorps for its velocity in combat. However, its hurried development prior...

During the Pacific War, the most successful component of the Imperial Japanese Fleet was its destroyer force. These ships were larger and, in most cases, better-equipped than their Allied counterparts. Armed with a powerful, long-ranged torpedo, they proved to be formidable opponents. Initially instrumental in an unbroken string of Japanese victories, it was not until the Guadalcanal campaign that these...

Following the destruction of much of the Japanese fleet and air arms in the latter half of 1944, in desperation, the Imperial Japanese Navy proposed using “special attack” formations, or suicide attacks. These initially consisted of crude improvisations of conventional aircraft fitted with high-explosive bombs that could be crashed into US warships. Called “Divine Wind” (Kamikaze), the special attack formations...

The first book to examine the Japanese and American tank forces in the Philippines campaigns, which saw the biggest armoured clashes of the Pacific War. The Philippines saw the most extensive tank combat of any single theatre in the Pacific War. In this book, armour expert Steven J. Zaloga explains the capabilities of the tank forces involved and how they...

This is the first history of the legendary US Army's HAWK missile system, the world's first mobile air-defence missile system, which saw service and combat around the world. Designed to counteract the threat posed by advanced 1950s Soviet-built aircraft, the first HAWK unit became operational in 1959. At its peak, it saw frontline service in the Far East, Panama, Europe,...

A history of the Soviet Navy's cruisers, from the opening shots of the October Revolution through to the combat they saw during World War II. The Soviet Navy of World War II boasted a cruiser fleet that was among the most eclectic to see service. In this book, noted military historian and Soviet specialist Alexander Hill explains the role of...

A detailed, illustrated study of Germany's Panzer forces that invaded the Soviet Union, explaining how and why they performed as they did. Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany's huge and fateful invasion of the Soviet Union, was the culmination of nearly two years of European conquests. By the time of Barbarossa, Germany's Panzer forces had honed their Blitzkrieg methods of fast-moving warfare,...

Explores the history of the US Navy's 11 new steel warships, built during the late 19th century to advance American naval supremacy. After the American Civil War, the powerful US Navy was allowed to decay into utter decrepitude and was becoming a security liability. In 1883, Congress approved four new steel-constructed vessels called the “ABCD” ships. The three protected cruisers...

The Royal Navy's battleships at the turn of the 20th century were the most powerful battlefleet in the world and embodied one of the key periods in warship development—the development of the dreadnought battleship. The term 'pre-dreadnought' was applied in retrospect to describe the capital ships built during the decade and a half before the launch of HMS Dreadnought in...

An illustrated study of the design, development and eventual fates of the uncompleted super-battleships intended to be built before and during World War II. Before the start of World War II, the battleship was still king, and all the major powers were designing even mightier battleships to surpass their most modern and powerful classes. But when war broke out, aircraft...

Amphibious assault ships have been at the centre of nearly all of Britain’s expeditionary campaigns since World War II, from the Suez crisis of 1956 to operations as far afield as Borneo (1963–66), the Falklands (1982), Sierra Leone (2000), and Iraq (2003). In major operations such as Suez and the Falklands, the use of amphibious assault ships was essential to...

Packed with illustrations, this is a study of the Polish warships such as the Grom-class destroyers that were developed and built in the interwar years. Newly independent Poland’s naval force was created in 1920, initially with six ex-German torpedo boats. However, after German-Soviet exercises off the Polish coast in 1924, funding for warships was hastily allocated. Two destroyers and three...

An illustrated history of the American-built destroyers and frigates supplied to the Royal Navy under Lend-Lease, which played a crucial role in Britain's war in the Atlantic. As U-boat attacks on Britain’s vital sea lanes increased in ferocity, and Royal Navy warship losses mounted, the United States passed the Lend-Lease Act, the cornerstone of America’s wartime role as armourer to...

The Matilda was the principal British infantry tank in the early years of World War II. It served with the British Expeditionary Forces (BEF) in France and later in North Africa, where it earned the title Queen of the Desert. Outclassed by increasingly powerful German anti-tank weapons, it still remained a power in the South-East Pacific, and was kept in...

This book examines the major warships of the Imperial Russian Navy which participated in the Russo-Japanese War. The focus is on the battleships, coastal defence warships, and cruisers of the Pacific Squadron and Baltic Squadron that fought during the war. It discusses in detail their design and development between the years of 1885 and 1905, concentrating particularly on battleships and...

A superbly illustrated history of the Royal Navy’s World War II monitors – gunboats armed with a single, large-calibre gun turret – and their roles and battles around the world. When World War II broke out, the Royal Navy possessed a sizeable fleet of battleships and battlecruisers. However, these formed the core of the battle fleets and were rarely free...

An essential guide to the tanks that fought the greatest armoured clashes of modern times, between Saddam Hussein's Soviet-supplied army and the advanced tanks fielded by the Coalition. The Gulf War of 1991 was the largest tank-vs-tank confrontation of the modern era, and the only large-scale tank combat ever to involve major NATO armies. With the Iraqi Army equipped primarily...

Super-Battleships of World War I by Angus Konstam takes you back to a pivotal moment in naval history, when the victors of World War I were developing a formidable new generation of 'hyper-dreadnoughts' and battlecruisers. This book, fully illustrated, delves into the big-gun warships that were conceptualised but never realised. In 1918, naval warfare was on the brink of significant...

An expert guide to the tanks that fought for the Axis in the Italian Campaign between 1943 and 1945, the least-known armoured campaign of World War II.World War II came to Italian soil in 1943 with the landings in Sicily, which the Wehrmacht tried to crush using substantial Panzer offensives. Over the next two years the Allies fought their way...

The invasion of the Soviet Union saw the Red Army’s vast tank fleets crushed by the outnumbered Germans. Fully illustrated and packed with data, this book explains how and why. Contrary to popular belief, the largest tank battles of World War II were not during the Kursk campaign of 1943, but during Operation Barbarossa in the summer of 1941. The...

An up-to-date history and analysis of the German and Soviet tank forces that battled on eastern German soil in the final months of World War II. The final months of World War II on the Eastern Front saw the Wehrmacht fighting with exhausted armoured divisions, albeit now armed with the most advanced and heaviest tanks of the war, to slow...

Soviet Tanks at Stalingrad 1942–43 examines and analyses how the Soviet tank forces that fought at Stalingrad were rejuvenated in the months leading up to the battle, and the role they played in this iconic campaign. The Stalingrad campaign was a major turning point of World War II. The German Sixth Army’s 22 divisions and 250,000 troops were encircled and...

A world-renowned expert offers a focused, illustrated account of how Russian and Ukrainian armour fought during the crucial year of 2022, prior to the arrival of Western tanks. The invasion of Ukraine has seen full-scale mechanised warfare return to Europe. While Western armour and training has been a major part of Ukraine’s army since 2023, in the first year of...

A comprehensively illustrated account of the Atlanta-class cruisers, warships that found a surprising key role in the Pacific War as the US Navy's superb antiaircraft warships. In the late 1930s, the US Navy created a class of small, light cruisers intended as a versatile destroyer leader. The Atlantas could provide antiaircraft support, lead and launch torpedo attacks, serve as antisubmarine...

An illustrated history of the motor torpedo boats of Italy’s fast coastal forces, from their raids on enemy battleships in World War I to the dashing campaigns of World War II. The confined seas around Italy made fast torpedo boats particularly suitable for the Regia Marina. The first were derived from the glamorous prewar hotel motorboats of Venice; although too...

An illustrated study of Japan’s Nagato-class battleships: the IJN’s powerful super-dreadnoughts, which were heavily modernised to fight in World War II. Illustrated with the author’s much-acclaimed 3D reconstructions, naval researcher Stefan Draminski offers a technical and operational study of Nagato and Mutsu, Japan’s most powerful battleships of the dreadnought era. They were the world’s first battleships to mount 16-inch guns,...

An expert account of the development, role, and capabilities of the S-300 and S-400 air defence missile systems, key strategic weapons in Putin's Russia. Few modern missile systems have had such significance as the S-300 family. Highly regarded technically, Russia’s most powerful air-defense systems have been a major strategic asset to the country, exported to major powers around the world,...

In the 1920s and 30s, aircraft designer Andrey Tupolev designed a series of advanced torpedo boats for the USSR. Superbly illustrated, this is their first history in English. The Soviet Navy's fast attack craft were inspired by the 1919 Kronstadt raid, conducted by British hydroplaning, torpedo-armed Coastal Motor Boats (CMBs). The first were to be CMB copies, but with Soviet...

The Soviet Union's cruise missile submarines, from the modified Whiskey to the Oscar II classes, were among the most formidable vessels of the Cold War. They were initially designed to carry land-attack nuclear-tipped cruise missiles aimed at striking targets on the eastern coast of the United States. By the late 1960s, however, submarine-launched ballistic missiles made the nuclear land-attack mission...

A new analysis of the technology and tanks that faced off against each other on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain, during the very height of the Cold War. From the 1960s onwards, there was a generational shift in tank design and warfare with the advent of CBR (chemical, biological, radiological) protection and a move away from HEAT ammunition to...

Tanks at the Iron Curtain 1946–60 offers a detailed study of the Soviet and NATO armoured forces that confronted each other in Central Europe during the early Cold War. This book explores the rapid development of their technology, tactics, and doctrine during this critical period. For 45 years, the most contested area in the world was the dividing line between...

A study of the history of the US Navy's gunboats and their role in building a worldwide American naval presence abroad and in combat, from the Yangtze era through to World War II. For more than half a century, American gunboats were the ships often responsible for policing small crises and provided deterrence and fast-response capabilities around the world –...

The first Rolls-Royce armoured car was a privately owned vehicle fitted with a machine-gun and a limited amount of armour plate, used by the Royal Naval Air Service in Flanders in 1914. By 1915, nearly 100 had been built and turned over to the Army. From then on, as Sir Albert Stern said, 'They searched the world for war', operating...

As the Second World War dragged on, heavy German losses in armoured vehicles and tanks ensured that assault gun units had to play an increasingly vital role in supporting the beleaguered infantry and countering Allied armour, particularly on the Eastern Front. The Sturmgeschütz was one of the most numerously produced and effectively deployed of the German armoured vehicles. This book...

A fully illustrated new assessment of the German tank force that won its greatest victory in France during 1940. The German conquest of France in 1940 was arguably the Wehrmacht’s greatest military achievement, conquering France in several weeks after having failed to do so in World War I. New Panzer tactics, dubbed 'Blitzkrieg', were at the heart of the German...

World War II marked the zenith of railway gun development. Although many of the railway guns deployed at the start of the conflict were of World War I vintage, Germany's ambitious development programme saw the introduction of a number of new classes, including the world's largest, the 80cm-calibre Schwerer Gustav and Schwerer Dora guns, which weighed in at 1,350 tons...

The Russian BMP infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) was one of the most significant innovations in infantry tactics in the latter half of the 20th century. Built in response to the threat of nuclear warfare, it was the world's first IFV, providing the infantry squad with unprecedented firepower, mobility and protection. With over 55,000 manufactured since 1966, the BMP is also...

This detailed study of the naval Spanish Civil War describes how the Spanish Navy, torn in two and comprising a Republican and Nationalist part, fought a civil war at sea involving both Hitler's and Mussolini's navies. In July 1936, a pro-fascist coup orchestrated by General Franco tore Spain apart and plunged the country into a bitter civil war. Like Spain...

Three times during the 17th century, England and Holland went to war as part of an ongoing struggle for economic and naval supremacy. Primarily fought in the cold waters of the North Sea and the English Channel, the wars proved revolutionary in their impact upon warship design, armament, and naval tactics. During this time, the warship evolved into the true...

With war against Germany looming, Britain pushed forward its carrier programme in the late 1930s. In 1938, the Royal Navy launched the HMS Ark Royal, its first-ever purpose-built aircraft carrier. This was quickly followed by others, including the highly-successful Illustrious class. Smaller and tougher than their American cousins, the British carriers were designed to fight in the tight confines of...

In 1941, as the Battle of the Atlantic raged and ship losses mounted, the British Admiralty desperately tried to find ways to defeat the U-Boat threat to Britain’s maritime lifeline. Facing a shortage of traditional aircraft carriers and shore-based aircraft, the Royal Navy, as a stopgap measure, converted merchant ships into small ‘escort carriers’. These were later joined by a...

The idea of a heavy cruiser emerged in the aftermath of World War I and was closely linked to the limits set by the inter-war Washington Naval Treaty. The pre-World War I concept of armoured cruisers had been abandoned, but in their stead, the Admiralty saw a place for powerful cruisers. These were able to patrol the sea lanes of...

When the Red Army needed to mechanise its cavalry branch in the 1930s, the BT fast tank was its solution. Based on the American Christie high-speed tank, the Red Army began a programme to adapt the design to its own needs. Early versions were mechanically unreliable and poorly armed, but by the mid-1930s, the BT-5 emerged, armed with an excellent...

The Churchill Infantry Tank 1941–51 was undoubtedly one of the most successful British tanks of the Second World War. Although it suffered from being underarmed, a defect common to most British armoured vehicles of the period, it was nevertheless loved by its crews. Its cross-country ability was unrivalled, and it was less inclined to 'brew-up' from a direct hit than...

A detailed, illustrated look at the earliest seven classes of destroyer fielded by the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. Several classes of Japanese destroyer were built before the war, including the famous Fubuki class. Known as the “Special Type” by the Japanese, these destroyers were, upon their completion in the late 1920s, the most powerful class of destroyers...

By November 1918, only one Italian training unit equipped with French Schneider and Renault tanks had been formed. Consequently, during the 1920s, the Italian army had just one single tank type in its armoured inventory – the Fiat 3000. Only in 1927 was the first tank unit formed as a branch of the infantry and not as an independent organisation....

The M4 Sherman tank was the mainstay of the Western allies between 1942 and 1945. Fast and modern, it was better than most of the tanks Britain had to offer. The American Chief of Staff claimed in November 1943 that it had been hailed widely as 'the best tank on the battlefield today'. However, by the time of the Normandy...

Illustrated throughout, this book explains the composition and qualities of the Soviet tank force that fought Germany’s mighty Panzers at the biggest tank battle in history. In the summer of 1943, Hitler’s army had rebuilt its Panzer forces after defeat at Stalingrad and retreat from the Caucasus. New types, including the Panther, Tiger, and Elefant, at last added technical superiority...

The patrol vehicles used by Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan and Iraq vary quite dramatically between the theatres as well as amongst the Coalition members, and have been developed and upgraded to meet the demands of the deployment. Covering all the major Coalition nations, Leigh Neville continues his look at the elite forces deployed in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi...

A comprehensive, illustrated account of the new generation of advanced tanks to emerge during the last 15 years of the Cold War, showcasing major improvements in armour protection, gunsights, and fire-control systems. Focusing on the technology of the period, author Steven J. Zaloga explains how the demands of a potential Cold War battlefield spurred the development of the 20th century’s...

A new study of tank warfare used in the Soviet offensive of Operation Bagration, which destroyed Army Group Center. Operation Bagration, the 1944 summer campaign on the Russian Front, has been called "Hitler's Greatest Defeat." The operation involved substantial tank and armoured vehicles on both sides. However, the German forces were severely hampered by the transfer of dozens of Panzer...

Designed and produced under the regulations of the Washington Naval Treaty, the heavy cruisers of the Pensacola, Northampton, Portland, New Orleans, and Wichita classes were exercises in compromise. While they possessed very heavy armament—the Pensacolas, for example, carrying a main battery of ten 8” guns—this came at the cost of protection. The armour was the same thickness as a gun...

US Heavy Cruisers 1943–75 follows on from a companion book covering the US heavy cruisers built prior to the war, together forming the definitive guide to the US’s heavy cruiser classes. Versatile warships, the heavy cruisers of the Baltimore class, and their successors in the Oregon City and Des Moines classes, commonly acted as carrier escorts throughout World War II,...

During World War II, the United States built 72 light cruisers of various classes. In response to the severe air threat that surface ships faced, new cruisers were designed with increasingly heavy antiaircraft weaponry as well as the traditional 6in guns. With the speed and range to keep up with aircraft carriers, and their considerable antiaircraft capability, they were a...

The Border War saw the biggest armoured battles in Africa since World War II. Starting as a counter-insurgency operation by the South African Defence Force (SADF) against the South West Africa People's Organisation, South Africa became embroiled in the complex Angolan Civil War, where they came up against enemies well supplied with equipment and armoured vehicles from the Soviet Union....