Military Model Scene

Title: Tanks in the Philippines 1944-45
Author: Steven J. Zaloga
Publisher: Osprey
ISBN: 978-1-4728-5940-2

'The biggest armored clashes of the Pacific War', New Vanguard number 334, and another book from well known armour expert, Steve Zaloga, and with illustrations once again from illustrator Felipe Rodriguez. A 48-page soft-cover book.
The war in the Pacific never saw the deployment of large armoured formations such as were seen in Europe, North Africa and Russia but this new book does tell us about the largest that took place in the Pacific Theatre, when US forces moved to re-take the islands of the Philippines from Japanese occupation during 1945/45. After a brief introduction to set the scene, there are sections covering the Doctrine & Organisation of both the IJA and the US Army, before comparisons of the Technical Factors of the armoured vehicles fielded by both sides in the conflict. That leaves the bulk of the book to cover the battles for the large islands of both Leyte and Luzon. On Luzon the Japanese fielded their 2nd Armoured Division, one of the small number of armoured divisions they had. They only used a few tank companies on Leyte. This contrasts to the US who only operated 7 Tank Battalions, 3 Tank Destroyer Battalions plus a separate Tank Company. The terrain on the islands involved lots of forested and mountainous areas which were unsuited to armoured vehicles, though there was a large plain on Luzon, which had seen clashes in 1942/43 when the Japanese took the islands, and it did again in 1944/45 campaign. The book is closed with an interesting analysis of how the two opponents compared.
In addition to the basic story of events, there are the usual fine colour illustrations from Felipe Rodriguez, plus this time there is a great collection of rare archive images which provide more really interesting content. There are M3 Stuarts and an M3 half-track in use by the Japanese, captured by them when they took the Philippines earlier in the war. Also on the Japanese side, and in addition to the Type 95 and Type 97 Chi-Ha, there are more unusual ones such as the slightly larger Type 89, the Type 1 Ho-Ni 75mm SPG, a Type 4 Ho-Ro 150mm assault gun, a Type 2 Ka-Mi and best of all (to me anyway). the Type SS-Ki Tei Gets (Model D) armoured engineer vehicle, armed with 3 flamethrowers and the fuel tanks mounted between the road wheel suspension units. There is a lot in here for armour enthusiasts, armour historians and modellers alike.
Thanks to Osprey for the review copy.

Robin