Hello There! Recently I have finished a few books and found them very helpful for various aspects of my wargaming hobby. My habit of reading a number of books at the same time, one at work, one before bed and one in the afternoon, is not something that I would not recommend!
The title and summary of 'The Tanks are Coming Through Now' appeared very promising and did not fail to please.
The chapters cover: Planning, Terrain, Training, Opening Battles South, Cauldron, Armoured Battles, Infantry Battles, Bir Hacheim and Conclusion.
I bought this after realising it covered a lot of the encounters from the battle of Gazala. It includes maps showing troop deployments on specific pieces of high ground, showing trench positions and accompanying heavy weapons and supporting artillery units.
Overall, and due to the confused nature of Gazala, the infantry and armoured battles do cross over in their chapters, but can be followed.
From a wargames perspective there are some useful maps and information to compile scenarios for a wargame. Also the maps do correspond with the text but the maps are all together, in the centre of the book, so the map relating to the text are far apart.
Also some of the place names in the text are difficult to find on the maps, if at all. Due to the sparseness of place names in the desert, some references points of height are used and are also difficult to find.
The chapter on Bir Hacheim is sparse but did produce some new information that I have not seen before.
Overall I would recommend this book, for the scenario information alone, but also for the information on the switching of armoured regiments and squadrons between brigades and divisions and unit strengths during the Battle. Units were constantly changing as squadrons were added and removed from commands during the whole of the battle.
No comments:
Post a Comment