After being away from the forum for such a long time and not having kept myself informed by reading as much as I used to do, I need to get myself started up again with a book or two about tanks. I saw Osprey have released a new series, Osprey Duel, perhaps suitable for som light reading to get me going. Has anyone read any of these books yet and have an opinion about them? http://www.ospreyduel.com/index.php
I haven't heard of these, but it's funny if you consider all the debate we've had on here about this exact subject. As far as I know, the consensus on this forum is that no version of the Sherman is comparable to any version of the Tiger simply because they were designed for different purposes. What other "duels" have they published so far? I'm wondering if their other match-ups are more succesful...
Only the Panther vs T-34 so far, as far as tanks are considered. I don't think they are supposed to reach any conclusions though, more to just make a theoretical comparison between two opponents. I'll propably buy one of them anyway, without having the greatest of expectations I might add.
I do fail to see how these book has any academic merit over two books on the two tanks. They're probably cheaper, though. Food for online discussions between fanboys, I guess.
There is a Mustang vs. FW190 book, and also a Japanese Carrier vs. American Carrier one. There are more, as well.
I've recently bought the 'Sherman Firefly vs. Tiger' book and thought I'd add my two penn'orth. I'm not really a great Osprey fan and feel that this could be the subject of a much larger book - also, it's something of a misnomer because the book effectively centres around Operation Totalize. To be fair, though, the book is value-for-money ( and mine came with a reasonable Amazon discount ). It's a good, quite light 'read' and author Stephen A Hart is a respected author on the subject. Care has been taken to select some lesser-known photos and there are some nice shots of the battlefield as it appears today. This cannot be considered an academic work, but there's a good bibliography to point the way toward more specialist reading. On the debit side, the 'Who killed Michael Wittmann?' story is raked over yet again, with author Hart trying to wrest the glory back for the British from Brian Reid's attempts to claim Wittmann for the Canadians. This argument will go on and on, I suppose. I also found the 'gunsight artwork' a little gimmicky. I'd give it 6.5 out of 10......maybe more if the subject is new to you.
