Forgotten Tank and Guns of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s

I ordered a number of books from Amazon at the same time, and as they have become available, they have been delivered. The latest is David Lister's FORGOTTEN TANKS AND GUNS OF THE 1920s, 1930s AND 1940s.

The book feels like a collection of separate articles, and therefore lends itself more to being something one dips into rather than reads from cover to cover. That is not to say that it is not an interesting book to read; it is ... but it does not feel as if it has a narrative running though it.

The book is split into twelve chapters:

• Chapter 1: Lurking in the Jungle ... which looks at the Japanese heavy tanks that were designed or that never went into series production.
• Chapter 2: Battle Wing ... which looks at the Carden-Baynes airborne light tank/glider and how British tanks were eventually delivered to the battlefield by glider.
• Chapter 3: From the Sea, through the Blood to the Green fields beyond ... which looks at various British amphibious armoured vehicle designs, including the AT-1, which to my untutored eye looked very like a Crusader tank turret atop the hull of a Buffalo amphibious tracked vehicle.
• Chapter 4: You Disston my Tank? ... which looks at various armoured tractors, including the Disston tanks supplied to Afghanistan.
• Chapter 5: The Smoking Gun ... which looks at the development of the British 'close support' tank concept.
• Chapter 6: Hail Hydran! ... which looks at the work of Lewis Motley, the chief designer of Motley products, who designed a tank destroyer based on a Universal Carrier chassis that was armed with four(!) 6-pounder gun barrels that were pre-loaded and discared after being fired AND the Motley rocket gun!
• Chapter 7: The Cambridge Camal ... which looks at the development of the Cambridge Projectile, a lightweight shell designed to be used in the Camal (Cambridge Aluminium) infantry gun.
• Chapter 8: Schwimmpanzer 36
• Chapter 9: Recoil Control ... which looks at development of the the Galliot muzzle break, which was trialled in 1941 on 6-pounder anti-tank guns mounted on a Renault UE armoured carrier and a Lorraine 37L armoured carrier, and later fitted to a 32-pounder gun mounted in the nose of a de Havilland Mosquito FB XVIII (Tsetse) fighter-bomber!
• Chapter 10: The Soldierless Tank ... which looks at various British attempts to produce a radio-controlled tank.
  
• Chapter 11: The Secret Life of the Infantry Tank ... which looks at the various one-man tankettes designed and built by Giffard le Quesne Martel and the A11 Infantry Tank (Matilda Mk.1).
• Chapter 12: The Tanks without a War... which looks at the fail postwar bureaucratic attempt to write a history of British tank development up to 1939. It includes an attempt to explain how the 'cruiser' tank concept came about, and the muddled thinking that led to some tanks being referred to as 'battlecruisers', 'heavy cruisers', 'cruisers', and 'light cruisers' ... sometimes simultaneously! It also covers the background to the A6, A7, A8, A14, and A16 tanks designs, the attempts to find a suitable tank engine and air-cooled tank machine gun, a visit by British officers to Russia to observe tank exercises, and a hilarious (and failed) German project to help their soldiers understand British humour!

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FORGOTTEN TANKS AND GUNS OF THE 1920s, 1930s AND 1940s was written by David Lister, edited by Paul Charlton, and published in 2018 by Pen & Sword Military (ISBN 978 1 52671 453 4).