Military Model Scene

Title: Tanks of D-Day 1944
Author: Steven J. Zaloga
Publisher: Osprey Books
ISBN: 978-1-4728-4664-8

New Vanguard number 296, a 48-page soft-cover book in this ever popular series from Osprey, and from well known author Steve Zaloga. An ideal companion to his other recent New Vanguard title, 'Allied Tanks in Normandy 1944'. Steve has been writing books on armour for many years now, and he is also a fine modeller who contributed many fine articles to Military Modelling magazine over the years. He really knows his subject very well indeed.
Rather than looking at the standard gun tanks as covered in the previous title, this one is focussed on the special purpose armour that was developed for the beach assaults. This means especially the various 'Funnies' used by 79th Armoured Division. The introduction sets out the lessons from the failed assault on Dieppe in 1942, and more successful operations in the Mediterranean. The first main section looks at each of the specialised vehicles individually, and these include the Sherman DD (Duplex Drive) 'swimming' tanks, the Sherman Crab mine flail, Churchill AVRE, AVRE Carpet Layers and more. Then there is a section on the Tanks, Doctrine & Organisation of the Allied armies. That moves on to the final main section of the book, which tells us the results on not only the 5 Normandy beaches of Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha and Utah, but also in the assault on the Southern coast of France in Operation Dragoon. Everything is rounded off at the end with a Battle Analysis, and considers just how well these specialist AFVs performed in practice.
Plenty of archive images throughout the book, along with more of the fine artwork by Filipe Rodriguez. Additional support includes the units assigned to the individual beaches, the numbers of the different vehicle types and more. Some of them were more successful that others, and opinions differed on how effective each was, the DD in particular. Written with the eye of an experience modeller, I am sure the many modelling fans who like the 'Funnies' will enjoy this one, as will anyone with an interest in the history of D-Day and the events of the invasions in both Normandy as well as the South of France.
Thanks to Osprey for our review copy.

Robin