Originally posted by Ssnake:
The New Vanguard books aren't bad, but they're not really encyclopedic either - which they don't attempt to be, which should be said in all fairness. The question is, what are you looking for?
The NVs are good for a quick overview and a good idea about the general layout of the internal components.
Or are you more interested about the tactical capabilities, the technical details, and/or something else. Depending on this the answers may vary.
Having said that, ...- the best book about the Leo 2 is probably Walter Spielberger's 1995 edition of "Leopard 1 und Leopard 2" (Motorbuch Verlag - in German, mind you.)
- The "Leopard 1 Trilogy" is probably the bible about all kinds of variants of the entire Leopard 1 vehicle family, including engineering and bridgelayer vehicles etc.
- The best book I've come across so far about the T-72 is "T-72/72M" by Frantisek Koran et al., Wings & Wheels Publications; it is however written primarily for the modeller with lots and lots of photos of all kinds of details.
- Generally Steve Zaloga and Christopher Foss are names of good reputation. Marsh Gelbart wrote the best book there is about the Merkava MBT series.
If there is a decent book about the T-80, it's probably in Russian. I'd be interested myself in a book of similar qualities like the ones that I listed dealing with the T-80. But it may still be required to be written. Yes I meant to tell you about that T72 book, Its quite good but very much as you say for the modeller. They also do one on the T55 which is also quite good.
Florent, if you want to know all the soviet built vehicles in context try and get 'Soviet/Russian Armor and Artillery design practices' one of the authors of which was Steve Zaloga. You can find a number of elements in it in the Osprey books, but its nice to have it as a compendium, and there is lot of new stuff and photographs as well. There is a good book on T64 by Vasiliy Chobcuk, mostly in Russian but excellent photos and diagrams, and many English captions.
Course, if you want to get a good overview of ALL tank warfare since ww1 till the 1990s, you could still do far worse than get 'Tank Vs Tank' by Kenneth Macksey. Its the first book on tanks I ever read (at school in their surprisingly enlightened library) and still one well worth getting. Not only does it have a lot on the tactical use of Tanks and AFVs, it also has some good insight into the emerging technologies.
