Search results for ""Author Anthony Tucker-Jones""

The Second World War campaigns in North Africa, on the Eastern Front and in northwest Europe were dominated by armoured warfare, but the battles in Italy were not. The mountainous topography of the Italian peninsula ensured that it was foremost an infantry war, so it could be said that tanks played a supporting role. Yet, as Anthony Tucker-Jones demonstrates, in the battles fought from the Allied landings in Sicily in 1943 to the German surrender after the crossing of the Po in 1945, tanks, self-propelled guns and armoured cars were essential elements in the operations of both sides. His selection of rare wartime photographs shows armour in battle at Salerno, Anzio and Monte Cassino, during the struggle for the Gustav Line, the advance on Rome and the liberation of northern Italy. And they reveal the full array of Axis and Allied armoured vehicles that was deployed - most famous among them were the German Mk IVs, Panthers, and Tigers and Allied Stuarts, Chafees, Shermans and Churchills. This volume in Anthony Tucker-Jones's series of books on armoured warfare in the Second World War gives readers a vivid impression of the Italian landscapes over which the campaign was fought, the wide range of military vehicles that were used, and the gruelling conditions endured by the men who fought in them.

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During the first years of the Second World War, Allied forces endured a series of terrible defeats at the hands of the Germans, Italians and Japanese. Their tanks were outclassed, their armoured tactics were flawed. But the advent of new tank designs and variants, especially those from the United States, turned the tables. Although German armour was arguably still superior at the end of the war, the competence of Allied designs and the sheer scale of their production gave them a decisive advantage on the armoured battlefield. This is the fascinating story that Anthony Tucker-Jones tells in this book which is part of a three-volume history of armoured warfare during the Second World War. Chapters cover each major phase of the conflict, from the early blitzkrieg years when Hitler's panzers overran Poland, France and great swathes of the Soviet Union to the Allied fight back in tank battles in North Africa, Italy and northern Europe. He also covers less-well-known aspects of the armoured struggle in sections on Allied tanks in Burma, India and during the Pacific campaign. Technical and design developments are a key element in the story, but so are changes in tactics and the role of the tanks in the integrated all-arms forces that overwhelmed the Axis.

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The Battle of the Bulge took the Allied armies by surprise in 1944\. It was a result of the extraordinary recovery of Hitler's panzer divisions following crushing defeats on the Eastern and Western fronts. In a daring offensive he hoped his panzers would unhinge the American and British push on the Rhine by charging through the Schnee Eifel, thereby prolonging the war. The consequence was one of the best-known battles of the entire conflict, and Anthony Tucker-Jones's photographic history is the ideal introduction to it. The story is told through a sequence of revealing contemporary photographs and a concise text. They give a sharp insight into the planning and decision-making, the armoured forces involved, the terrain and the appalling mid-winter conditions, the front-line fighting and the experience of the troops involved. The armoured battle, which was critical to the outcome, is the main focus. Through a massive tank offensive the Germans aimed to cut through the US 1st Army to Antwerp and Brussels, in the process trapping three Allied armies. The confusion and near collapse of the Americans as their defences were overrun is vividly recorded in the photographs, as is their resistance and recovery as the German spearheads were slowed, then stopped.

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Photographic history of the tanks of the Great War with rare archive shots of tanks in action on the Western Front.

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Rare photographs of the Allied campaign against the Germans in southern France

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In the late summer of 1944, SS-Obergruppenführer Wilhelm ‘Willi’ Bittrich found himself in the Netherlands surveying his II SS Panzer Corps, which was in a poor state having narrowly escaped the defeat in Normandy. He was completely unaware that his command lay directly in the path of a major Allied thrust: the 17 September 1944 launch of the largest airborne and glider operation in the history of warfare. Codenamed Operation Market Garden, it was intended to outflank the German West Wall and ‘bounce’ the Rhine at Arnhem, from where the Allies could strike into the Ruhr, Nazi Germany’s industrial heartland. Such a move could have ended the war. However, Market Garden and the battle for Arnhem were a disaster for the Allies. Put together in little over a week and lacking in flexibility, the operation became an all-or-nothing race against time. The plan to link the airborne divisions by pushing an armoured division up a sixty-five-mile corridor was optimistic at best, and the British drop zones were not only too far from Arnhem Bridge, but also directly above two recuperating SS Panzer divisions. This new book explores the operation from the perspective of the Germans as renowned historian Anthony Tucker-Jones examines how they were able to mobilise so swiftly and effectively in spite of depleted troops and limited intelligence.

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