Book review – British Military Trucks of World War Two

When I started to build a British force for France 1940 I had quite some problems when it came to soft-skins. First off, there aren’t that many in plastics, but a myriad in metal and resin. But the question was: Which of them were used in 1940? The net helped me somewhat, but, being who I am, I really wanted a reference book. Looking around I didn’t find anything interesting about British soft-skins in book-form. Nothing.

But a couple of months ago I saw that Tankograd Publishing had released what I was looking for. My local favourite hobby store, Hobbybokhandeln, took in a couple and I went down there during lunch break, looked at the book and promptly bought it.

British Military Trucks of World War Two – Manufacturers, Types, Variants and Service of Trucks in British Army and Royal Air Force Service 1939-45, Les Freathy, Tankograd Publishing, 256 pages hardcover with 680 photographs, 2012.

Do you recognize AEC, Albion, Austin, Bedford, Commer, Crossley, Dennis, Dodge, ERF, Foden, Ford, FWD, Garner, Guy, Hillman, Humber, Karrier, Leyland, Maudsley, Morris, Scammel, Standard or Thornycroft? They all produced trucks for the British Army or RAF, and you will get details of the different truck types that these manufacturers made during the war. Every type gets between a half and 13 pages worth of pictures, technical data and other information. Usually very clear pictures giving a lot of details and very useful for modelling.

There are also sections on lend-lease vehicles and trailers.

The only thing I missed, which is an important omission I think, is dates of use. This information is often in the text, but not always. It would have been nice to see it clearly in for example the tables of technical data for each vehicle, or maybe in a separate table where the dates of all vehicles were collected.

All in all I think this is a great reference book on something that, to my knowledge, simply hasn’t been covered in detail before. If you need or want to know all there is on British soft-skins, then you have to buy this book, and I give it a rating of 5 out of 5. Simply a must buy.

If you have a passing interest then it could be anything from a 1 to a 4, it is simply so specialized that it depends on the circumstances. But if you don’t buy it, then it could be a good idea to let someone else do, and borrow it J

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