Gordon Rottman

I first became interested in the high speed motorized warfare after reading few books on WW2 desert long range patrol and Popski's Private Army in Europe, and then followed with more contemporary accounts of South African Koevoet unit fighting insurgents in the African savanna and high speed combat by 32nd battalion in Angola (as you can see books mostly about warfare in open-ground/steppe like areas where high speed and concentrated automatic weapon fire were the tools for the job).

While all of this was more or less related to combat against lightly armed opponent (I mean in direct confrontation with tanks there is no discussion who would be blown up) accounts fromt hese books were enough to imagine Mad Max like scenes of squads engaging in wild automatic weapon (up to 20 mm caliber) exchanges while navigating huge expanses of territory.

That being said, I was surprised to find out about "ground gunship" concept utilized by US Army in Vietnam, considering the nature of the environment, rather cramped up traveling lanes through or very near dense forests and jungle, and with intensively artificially created buffer zones for easier enemy spotting (notorious defoliant use around bases and main communication lanes).

Author gives a very detailed overview of this part of US Army transportation command that was created out of necessity to enable defense of lightly armored and [generally] unprotected logistic convoys that were seen as an easy and tempting target of opportunity for the guerilla forces in the area.

Author's style aside (i.e. Free World weapons/equipment etc, which resonates with author's experiences in military), we are given a well rounded overview of the gun trucks history, various truck platforms, armor, weapons and communication systems used. Also there is general description of the gun trucks tactics and the way gun trucks were integrated into US Army convoy operations.

For the book of this size (below 50 pages) we are given tremendous amount of information. Bibliography provides additional sources to further expand the topic (not just on gun trucks as such but general military convoy operations in contested areas).

As one of the reviewers noted, gun trucks were integral part of the convoy operations and they cooperated with the Air Force and artillery in case of larger ambushes. Would it be good to get this additional information, of course. But author focused on the gun trucks only and truly provided a lot of info. Only critique from my end would be the quality of the photos - in some cases they were extremely grainy and dark and it was difficult to figure out what is what. Other than that this was very informative book.

Highly recommended.… (más)

Call this Osprey at its most workmanlike, as Rottman crams a great deal of detail into 64 pages, but there is little narrative to speak of. This is the sort of item that you have handy if you're reading about the Pacific Theatre in World War II and want to have hard information at hand about organization and equipment. A nice touch is that Osprey saw fit to provide seven color plates illustrating typical outfits at different points in the war; one for the Marines caught in the Japanese conquest of the Philippines, and one for the combat debut of each of the six Marine divisions.… (más)