Another typically excellent piece by Zaloga as he puts the tactical & technical failures of the French mechanized units into context, versus their German counterparts, with the battle at Stonne involving the the 3rd DCR and the 10th Panzer Division being the climax of this study. ( )

Osprey's Duel series usually doesn't quite work. Warfare is not about the Transformers one-on-one battle the Duel concept evokes and falsely propagates. Steve Zaloga fortunately breaks with the usual Osprey presentation and offers an excellent short introduction to the pre-WWII armor evolution. He expertly combines the findings of Karl-Heinz Frieser (which the author manages three times to misspell Freiser!) with French hagiographies to their armored troops. Contra Frieser, Zalonga shows that the Char B1's fuel consumption was not that much worse (even better) than the Panzer IV. The German fueling advantage came from better logistics and using common car fuel. Tactically, the Char B1 suffered from overtasking its crew which crippled the performance of its superior armament. The Germans had the better concept and more experience in handling tanks on the move and in battle.

While both Char B1 and Panzer IV were the most powerful tanks of their respective forces, they were far from typical for the 1940 battle of France. Panzer IV constituted only around ten percent of the tanks deployed, the Char B1 even under ten percent. The light tanks Renault 35, Hotchkiss 35/39 and Pz II were much more numerous. They also feature prominently in the Duel action vignette of Stonne.

Overall, a highly recommended title, with the usual Öspryu caveat: Osprey sucks at foreign languages, the casualties range from typos to bizarre misspellings and word creations. The walking wounder of the British education system spread their ignorance among an unsuspecting public. ( )