Military History Encyclopedia on the Web

Chobham Armour, William Suttie. A study of all the post-war armoured vehicles developed at the Army’s centre for military vehicle design at Chobham Common, covering main battle tanks from the Centurion to Challenger II and a wide range of light and medium tracked and wheeled armoured vehicles. Well written and lavishly illustrated, this is an excellent guide to the mainly successful military vehicles designed at Chobham (Read Full Review)

Super-Battleships of World War II – Montana class, Lion class, H-class, A-150 and Sovetsky Soyuz-class, Mark Stille. Looks at the last and largest generation of battleships to be designed (and in some cases laid down) by the world’s major naval powers, just as the Second World War brought new battleship construction to an end. Compares the more realistic British, American and (some) German designs with the massive Japanese design and the over-ambitious Soviet designs, to paint a picture of the ‘lost’ last generation of battleships (Read Full Review)

Soviet Pistols – Tokarev, Makarov, Stechkin and others, Leroy Thompson. Looks at the pistols used and produced in the Soviet Union, from the pre-revolutionary Nagant M1895 to post-war automatic pistols, with excellent sections on their development and technical details, greatly aided by the author’s experience with these weapons, supported by good sections on their use in combat (Read Full Review)

Teutonic Knight versus Lithuanian Warrior – The Lithuanian Crusade 1283-1435, Mark Galeotti. Looks at three battles of the long Lithuanian Crusade, two Teutonic victories and the crushing Lithuanian victory at Grunwald/ Tannenberg that triggered the decline of the Teutonic Order. Compares the organisation, tactics and equipment of the fighting monks of the Teutonic Order and the initially pagan Lithuanians, who turn out to be more similar than one might have expected before focusing on the three battles. (Read Full Review)

Me 262 – Northwest Europe 1944-45, Robert Forsyth. Looks at the brief combat carrier of the Me 262, the only jet fighter to see combat during the Second World War, when it outpaced every Allied aircraft it faced, and when things went well could inflict serious damage on individual bomber formations. However as this book demonstrates it arrived too late, there were never enough of them, and too many were lost to non-combat reasons (Read Full Review)

The Last Viking, Don Hollway. A dramatic telling of the story of Harald Hardrada, making extensive use of later saga sources to fill out the details of an otherwise relatively poorly documented life. May as a result sometimes include material from the sagas that isn’t documented elsewhere, but does make for a more satisfying biography(Read Full Review)

Cromwell against the Scots – The Last Anglo-Scottish Wars 1650-1652 (revised edition), John D Grainger. Looks at the war between the former civil war allies, triggered by English fears of a possible Scottish invasion after the Scots accepted Charles II as their king, and which saw Cromwell invade and conquer much of Scotland before the Scots carried out a fairly desperate invasion of England in the hope of attracting Royalist support before being overwhelmed at Worcester. Looks at the political debates in both countries, the skilfully conducted (by both sides) campaign in Scotland, and the final desperate Scottish/ Royalist invasion of England (Read Full Review)

Hitler’s Fortresses in the East – the Sieges of Ternopol, Kovel, Poznan and Breslau 1944-1945, Alexey Isaev. Looks at four examples of the sieges of cities designated as Fortresses by the Germans as the war turned against them on the Eastern Front, covering the often brutal fighting in these besieged cities, German attempts to either break the siege or at least support the fighters from outside, how the way the Soviets tackled them changed, and if they actually performed the role they were intended to (Read Full Review)

Dark Waters, Starry Skies – The Guadalcanal-Solomons Campaign, March-October 1943, Jeffrey R. Cox. Looks at the fighting in the Solomons from the tail end of the Guadalcanal campaign to the end of the invasion of New George, along with the connected fighting on New Guinea and the naval and air campaigns associated with those campaigns. This was a period when the naval war was finally balanced, with the Americans in control in daylight and the Japanese at night, with both sides able to inflict heavy blows on the other, but against a background of growing American power and a series of Japanese setbacks (Read Full Review)

Eben-Emael and the Defence of Fortress Belgium 1940, Clayton Donnell. Looks at the role of the Belgian forts in the campaign of 1940, going beyond the famous fall of Fort Eben-Emael to look at how the remaining forts were able to hold out for much longer than this would leave you to expect, with several fighting on for more than two weeks, despite lacking the infantry support they were meant to rely on. A very atmospheric account of what it was like to be under siege in these isolated fortresses, as the front line moved further away from them (Read Full Review)

Roman Conquests – Mesopotamia and Arabia, Lee Fratantuono. Looks at the Roman involvement in Arabia and Mesopotamia, two areas that were never fully conquered and that saw some of Rome’s worst defeats during attempts to conquer Parthia and wars with Persia as well as the establishment of provinces of Arabia and Mespotamia in the western part of those areas. An interesting look at Rome’s one border with a power of equal standing and military power (Read Full Review)

Landing Craft & Amphibians – Seaborne Vessels in the 20th Century, Ben Skipper. Covers a very large topic in a fairly short space, looking at everything from the smallest Infantry landing craft through to the massive Landing Ship Tanks, over a period stretching from Gallipoli, through the Second World War to the end of the 20th Century. As a result each type of vessel only gets a small space, but we do get a good overview of the massive range of landing craft and amphibians produced over the last century, and in particular the huge variant of such craft produced on all sides during the Second World War (Read Full Review)

Warship 2022 – ed John Jordan. An interesting collection of high quality articles on topics that vary from the gunboats of Imperial Germany to the massive ‘super-battleship’ designs produced in the Soviet Union in 1939-41, covering a time period from the nineteenth century to the present day. A good selection of high quality articles, many of which could easily be turned into a stand-alone Osprey (Read Full Review)

Caudine Forks 321 BC – Rome’s Humiliation in the Second Samnite War, Nic Fields. Looks at the early history of Rome, the nature of the Samnites and their expansion in southern Italy, the earlier clashes between the two, the aftermath of the battle, the possible impact of the Samnite wars on the Roman army, and what little we know about the actual battle itself, which may not actually have included much fighting (Read Full Review)