With Cold War fears mounting, the M47 and M48 were rushed into production – teething troubles were inevitable. In the decade that followed, however, these tanks proved to be the backbone of US armoure
The Battle of the Bulge was the last major German offensive in the West and the largest and the most costly battle fought by the US Army in World War II. Fought during the bitter winter of 1944-45, an
The history of US light tanks during World War II is a chequered one. The Light Battalions of US Armored Divisions were initially filled with M3A1 and M5 Stuart tanks, however, on the battlefields of
The Mediterranean Theater of Operations (MTO) saw the first operational deployment of US armoured divisions in World War II, and the experience proved chastening for the 1st Armored Division when it s
General George Patton's most controversial campaign was the series of battles in autumn 1944 along the German frontier which centered on the fortified city of Metz. It took nearly four months, from Se
As armoured warfare tactics matured, mechanised infantry became a key ingredient in what is now called 'combined arms' doctrine. For the US Army of World War 2, the most important technical aspect of
Following the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes, the Allies began steps for the final assault into Germany. The long-delayed US Army thrust over the Roer River, Operation Lumberjack, finally took pl
The Iosef Stalin tanks were the ultimate heavy tanks developed by the Soviet Union and were popularly called 'Victory tanks' due to their close association with the defeat of Germany in 1945. Yet in s
Steven Zaloga offers up a rigorous and absorbing study of the first major Allied operation in Normandy after the D-Day landings - the capture of Cherbourg. Blending expert analysis, specially commissi
Dwight Eisenhower represented a fundamentally new type of military commander in the 20th century: commander as manager rather than the traditional warrior commander. Armies had become so large and mil
In 1945, with her fleet destroyed and her armies beaten, the only thing that stood between Japan and an Allied invasion was the numerous coastal defence positions that surrounded the islands. This is
George S. Patton, Jr. was the iconic American field commander of World War II, and is widely regarded as the US Army's finest practitioner of mechanized warfare. Having chased bandits in the Mexican b
The M1 Abrams was the most radical departure in US tank design since World War II. Until the advent of the M1 in the early 1980s, the US Army had relied on the steady evolution of the M26 Pershing tan
The Siegfried Line campaign was one of the most frustrating and bloody series of battles fought by the US Army in Northwest Europe during World War II (1939-1945).In order to break through the German-
A highly illustrated study of Operation Lüttich, the German Panzer counteroffensive against the Normandy bridgehead in August 1944 that backfired, leading to a collapse of the German position in north
General Omar Bradley was the premier US Army tactical commander in the European Theater of Operations in 1944-45. A West Point classmate of Dwight Eisenhower, Bradley was the quintessential US field c
Following the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944, the First US Army engaged in a six-week struggle to break out of the Normandy beach-head. The hedgerow country of lower Normandy, called the Bocage, prese
As the final month of fighting in Europe in 1945 dawned, the Allies embarked upon a series of mopping-up operations, destroying the last centers of German resistance as the essentially defeated Wehrma
