This is supposedly a compendium of every armored vehicle produced in the 20th century. It should be re-titled as 'Military Vehicles', as trucks, jeeps and staff cars are also covered. It seems to be complete, and the illustrations seem to be accurate, as does the paragraph or so of text for each vehicle. But the specifications ... not so much. Don't use them as a serious reference for anything without double checking - a lot of them are for variants of the vehicles not pictured or discussed. ( )

A good, quick, brief reference. There's a short blurb on each vehicle and a chart of basic characteristics. I would have liked a 2nd view of the vehicle and a bit more data, but what can you expect from a paperback-sized reference with only 1 page per vehicle? This not recommended if you are already familiar with tanks and such, but if you have no idea, its a place to start. ( )

Another book from the B&N compact illustrated reference line that has all the same problems as the Battleships and carriers that I reviewed earlier but with some additional ones. For instants a few of the images don't match, like the entry for the M48 Patton that has the image of the M47 Patton or the M4A3 entry showing an image of an M4A3E8 while not even mentioning the E8 or E2 which were different from the base M4A3. In addition the little fact blurbs had some problems and while I might not be able to point out all of them some of the ones I found were:

1. Stating that the PzKpfw 38(t) was the basis for the Marder Tank destroyer (the 38(t) was only the base for the Marder III, the Marder I-II used the Panzer II for the base)

2. Saying that the WWI German A7V was used by the Polish post war (the fate of all A7V's used in the war is known and there is no photo or paper evidence of their use in Poland)

3. Saying that the StuG IIIF was only able to face Soviet armor after upgrading to the 7.5 cm StuK 40 L/48 (While the L/48 did give some improvement the StuG's equipped with the standard 7.5 cm StuK 40 L/43 could already handle most Soviet armor at normal range)

4. The Cromwell tank was only used for training up to D-day and specialty duties (while many were used for training due to the abundance of M4's, they did see combat during the D-day offensive with the 7th Armoured Division being fully equipped with them as well as the 1st Polish Armoured Division and Czech Armoured Brigade.)

Finally as with Battleships and carriers the tech specs on most of the entries are off the mark.

If you are interested in tanks I'd skip this one as there is just too much wrong with it for it to make a good quick reference book. ( )

Very poor reference, lots of misinformation and errors ( )