The Complete Guide to Tanks & Armoured Fighting Vehicles

A tank is defined as 'a means of transporting firepower about on the battlefield with its crew and weapon system protected from direct enemy fire', while Armoured Fighting Vehicles (AFVs) give tactical support to the tank.

This book is an authoritative history and directory of tanks and their immediate derivatives, such as ARVs (armoured recovery vehicles), tank destroyers, command versions, bridgelayers, mine-clearers and other Funnies, and AFVs such as armoured cars, armoured personnel carriers and self-propelled artillery, covering a vast range of wheeled, tracked and semi-tracked vehicles.

• Features A-Z catalogue for tank destroyers, command versions, specialised tanks, armoured cars, armoured personnel carriers and self-propelled artillery
  
• An illustrated history of the world's most important tanks and AFVs from the beginning of the 20th Century to the present day
  
• Examines the main battles, campaigns and wars in which tanks, armoured cars and self-propelled artillery have been deployed: the Somme, Cambrai, Blitzkrieg, El Alamein, Kursk, D-Day, Korea, Vietnam, Iran-Iraq, Arab-Israeli and Gulf wars, as well as the modern peacekeeping armoured personnel carriers and multi-role vehicles of today
  
• Over 400 vehicles shown in 1200 wartime and modern photographs, many from the world-famous Tank Museum in Bovington, Dorset
  
• Specification boxes provide at-a-glance information about each vehicle's official name, country of origin, date, crew, weight, dimensions, armament, armour, powerplant and performance
  
• Fascinating quotes from military leaders throughout the text, plus a glossary explaining key military terms and abbreviations.

About the Authors

Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) George Forty, OBE, FMA, is a well-known author specializing in armoured warfare. He served for 32 years in the Royal Tank Regiment, first seeing active service in Korea. Ten years later he commanded an armoured reconnaissance squadron on operations in Aden, the Persian Gulf and Borneo. George Forty left the Army in 1975 to pursue a writing career, and in 1981 he was appointed Director and Curator of the world-famous Tank Museum in Bovington, Dorset, England.Honours List. To date he has written over 70 books and currently edits the Regimental journal Tank (since 1993).

Jack Livesey's love of armoured fighting vehicles was sparked off by a visit to the Imperial War Museum in London at the age of 12. In his 20 years in the British Army, most of them spent with the Parachute Regiment, he not only learned to drive them but also trained as a specialist in Soviet military vehicles. Now retired from the Army, Jack works part-time for the Imperial War Museum at Duxford, which has the largest collection of Soviet military vehicles in Britain and a comprehensive collection of British military vehicles.