British Tanks in Normandy by Ludovic Fortin

Reminiscent of some of the J.J. Fedorowicz tomes (such as Restayn and Muller's Combat History of the 10. Panzer Division), this book is physically beautiful, with a full-colour cover and glossy pages with excellent photo reproduction (all black and white) and colour profiles, unit insignia, and maps.

The book is broken down into three main sections. First are histories of each of the armoured units from the British Army (no Commonwealth or Polish units are covered) during the Normandy campaign, which cover actions, losses, and reorganizations. From this text, one gets some idea of the intensity of the fighting during this campaign and the high price paid by British tankers. Colour diagrams show orders of battle and arm of service insignia for the units. Only armoured units are covered - antitank and armoured car units fall outside of this book's scope.

Next are descriptions of the different tank types used by British forces, including the Cromwell and Challenger, Sherman and Firefly, Churchill, Stuart, M10 and Achilles tank destroyers, Priest and Sexton self-propelled guns, and the multitude of specialized armour types used in Normandy by the British: AVRE, DD, SBG, Crab, Crocodile, Sherman and Churchill ARVs, and AA tanks. There is a useful mix of combat photos and factory photos in this section (all are contemporary photographs, however: there are no shots of preserved examples).

Finally, and perhaps most interesting, are sections on tactics and organization plus the daily life of British tankers in Normandy. These sections provide much useful information and give a context to the vehicles which we model that is all too often lacking. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this part, and it gave me some great ideas for dioramas.

Although a number of the photos in this book have shown up before, they are reproduced very clearly here, and the captions are useful and detailed. There are a lot of photos that were new to me, however, and some surprises in here. Among other things, I was surprised at the number of Sherman I Hybrids (M4 Composite) shown in photos; this was a variant I thought fairly rare.

There are a few minor errors in the text (for instance, the 33rd Armoured Brigade chapter is mistakenly titled "33rd Armoured Division," and there are occasional references to Churchill IIs (e.g., p. 140) and Sherman IVs (e.g., p. 138), neither of which were present in Normandy and are obviously miscaptioned Churchill IIIs and Sherman IIIs; furthermore, I believe the Churchill on p. 163 is actually a Crocodile), but they do not detract from what is obviously a deeply researched work. The colour profiles, while apparently accurate from a markings standpoint, are not the greatest with regards to showing vehicle details (for instance, one Firefly is shown with a hull machine gun, while the Cromwell front views lack a muzzle brake for the main gun and other details).

I highly recommend this superb book to anybody interested in either the Normandy campaign or British armour of the Second World War. This book is chock-full of inspiring subjects for either stand-alone models or dioramas; indeed, perhaps its biggest fault is that so many of the vehicles featured in this book's pages are not available as plastic kits! I can only hope that similar books on American, Canadian, and Polish armoured units in Normandy are also coming.