Military trucks - Great Britain: books - history and models

British Military Trucks in Wehrmacht Service

Captured Beutefahrzeuge of British manufacture were a significant addition to Germany's military efforts in the later war years. Without these trucks, many stemming from the Battle of Dunkirk, the German war machine would have been much less capable of waging Blitzkrieg against the Soviet Union from 1941.
While Operation Dynamo, the evacuation from Dunkirk in May and June 1940, made possible the escape of more than 300,000 French and British soldiers, they had to leave all their heavy equipment behind.

All in all, the BEF lost around 65,000 vehicles, many of which returned to military service on the German side and doing their duty on the Eastern Front. Other sources for the German Wehrmacht to lay its hands on British trucks to supplement its own forces were Operation Demon in April 1941, the British evacuation from Greece, and the campaign in North Africa from February 1941 to June 1943.

This publication offers for the very first time a comprehensive overview on the various British trucks in Wehrmacht Service - captured around Dunkirk, in France, Belgium, Greece and North Africa - covering well-known models and makes such as the Bedford and the Morris-Commercial GS trucks in the 8cwt to 3-ton range, the heavy Scammell Pioneers and AEC Matadors, specialised vehicles such as cranes and field cars as well as many rarer makes, rarities and oddities.
A special chapter also grants an overview on the Canadian-built vehicles of the British Army that served with the Afrikakorps.

This book is the companion volume to Tankograd's 'British Military Trucks of World War 2'. For all British military vehicle enthusiasts these books are milestones.

British Military Trucks of the Cold War

The end of hostilities in 1945 left the British forces with a massive surplus of military vehicles placed throughout the many countries involved in the conflict. Much of this equipment after six years of war was in a very poor state of repair, and a lot was only fit for scrapping.
The development and use of military trucks in the post-war period was therefore dominated by the feverish search for the ideal military vehicle. Moves had been made between the War Office and British manufacturers to produce a family of standard types to avoid the logistical nightmare that had occurred during the war with so many different makes.
This search for much more suitable tactical-truck designs in the early 1950s created a period that was brimming with new ideas. The upcoming Cold War ushered in an incredible demand for a future, potentially nuclear clash between NATO and the Warsaw Pact on European soil.

The fear of World War Three made possible one of the most creative design periods in military technology ever. The introduction of the FV numbering system additionally aimed at standardising the British military vehicle.
After the war it blossomed into the idea of idealised military truck designs. The result of this heyday of military vehicle development was amazing trucks taking shape on drawing boards.
This book aims at illustrating this amazing story for the very first time in one comprehensive publication.