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296 Obras 8,403 Miembros 101 Reseñas 5 Preferidas

Sobre El Autor

Steven J Zaloga charts the little-known history of the T-80, covering the initial construction, through the development to the subsequent variants - the T-84 and Russia's enigmatic "Black Eagle Tank." Accompanying detailed cutaway artwork illustrates the unusual design features that made the T-80 mostrar más so controversial. mostrar menos

Series

Obras de Steven J. Zaloga

El innovador T-34/76 (1994) 83 copias
El carro medio Sherman (1993) 75 copias
El carro de combate T-72 (1993) 72 copias
The Polish Army 1939-1945 (1982) 68 copias
Los carros pesados KV-1 y KV-2 (1996) — Autor — 64 copias
Los semiorugas M2 y M3 (1994) 63 copias
El carro medio T-34/85 (1996) 63 copias
T-34 in action (1983) 58 copias
Inside the Soviet Army (1987) 52 copias
German Panzers, 1914-18 (2006) 49 copias
Carros en Oriente Medio (1981) 47 copias
The Atlantic Wall 1: France (2007) 46 copias
Overlord: The D-Day Landings (2009) — Autor — 45 copias
The Polish Campaign 1939 (1985) 42 copias
Red Army Handbook 1939-1945 (1998) 42 copias
George S. Patton (Command) (2010) 40 copias
Carros soviéticos modernos (1984) 40 copias
Defense of Japan 1945 (2010) 40 copias
Carros pesados soviéticos (1981) 39 copias
El carro ligero Renault FT (1988) 36 copias
Eisenhower (Command) (2011) 32 copias
Battle of the Bulge (2010) 32 copias
Helicópteros contracarro (1986) 29 copias
Gustaf Mannerheim (Command) (2015) 27 copias
Panzer 38t (2014) 26 copias
The T-34 Tank (1980) 25 copias
Patton's Tanks (1609) 25 copias
The Battle of the Bulge (2001) 24 copias
Omar Bradley (Command) (2012) 23 copias
Soviet Tanks Today (1983) 22 copias
T-64 and T-80 (1992) 17 copias
T-54 T-55 T-62 (1995) 17 copias
Operation Crossbow 1944 (2018) 13 copias
The US Army Jeep at War (2007) 11 copias
Russia's Bmp (2005) 8 copias
Die Panzer der Ostfront (1985) 1 copia
Dzień "D". Cz. 2 (2012) 1 copia

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Miembros

Reseñas

When I first started reading military history as a kid in the mid-1960s, the cult of air power and the United States Air Force was still in full swing, but even then, the 1943 raid on Ploesti seemed to inspire reservations, if only for the heavy casualties incurred. Flash forward to the mid-21st century, and this whole exercise seems even more dubious, as one now has access to intelligence information that was denied to the first generation of authors who wrote about this raid.

What it mostly comes down to is radio, as the commanders of the raid mandated radio silence as a means of gaining surprise, thus forfeiting hands-on control, not realizing that the German air defense system was aware that the American force was on its way basically the moment Operation "Tidal Wave" crossed into the Balkans from North Africa. The result being that a third of the force was lost, everyone was decorated for their gallantry, and the commander of IX Bomber Command was made a scapegoat and sent back to the United States. Whatever else was learned from this action, it's that the Axis oil industry could only be shut down with sustained effort; not a big one-time raid. Apart from that this is another excellent number in one of the best series that Osprey has come up in recent years.… (más)
 
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Shrike58 | otra reseña | Feb 1, 2024 |
Although I probably should have read Zaloga's number in this series on Operation "Tidal Wave" first, this is a crisp analysis of the gutting of the German war effort in 1944-1945 by shutting off the fuel, while at the same time grinding the Luftwaffe into powder. I became more interested in this booklet once I found out that Zaloga's day job involves air defense technology and analysis, and he covers matters of command and control, and what actually worked, as much as he does the course of the campaign. I wrapped up this work feeling more depressed by the pity of it all than I normally do: Whatever else strategic air war is it's a brutal slug-fest, and Zaloga does a good job of telling the story with numbers.… (más)
 
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Shrike58 | Dec 14, 2023 |
Great big cannons exert a certain fascination (see Heavyweights). And when they get big enough moving them around becomes problematic, leading to the railway gun. While the railway gun’s heyday was World War I, when the front remained stable enough to go to all the trouble of setting up emplacements (usually a turntable or a curving track to allow the gun some traverse) World War II fronts were fluid enough to minimize railway gun employment. Still, there were some cases where they were used to advantage; action across the English Channel, at Anzio, and around Sevastopol. Although the book covers French, Belgian, Italian, Soviet, Finnish, Japanese, British and American guns, the German guns take the center position.

The cross-Channel duels were not very effective for either side; it was extreme range for both and there wasn’t much of military importance to hit. Exhibiting their penchant for technical achievement at the expense of practicality, the Germans deployed an updated version of the WWI “Paris Gun” to coastal France – the 21cm K12. Like the “Paris Gun”, the weapon employed a truss on the barrel to prevent sag and used numbered and splined projectiles to cope with barrel erosion. While it succeeded in delivering shells as far as Rainham in Kent (88km away), a German artillery general dismissed it as a “toy”.

Also in the technical toy category were the 80cm K(E) guns, nicknamed “Gustav” and “Dora”. These were originally proposed by Krupp as a way to deal with the Maginot Line. While the Wehrmacht had no interest, they caught the fancy of Hitler’s obsession with giantism. “Dora” was deployed to Sevastopol, and fired 48 rounds. There are various legends about a near miss capsizing a Soviet destroyer in the harbor and a direct hit on a fortification penetrating 25+ feet of concrete; “Dora” is mythic enough to appear in Harry Turtledove’s WWII fantasy novel In the Balance, where it poses a problem alien lizard invaders can’t deal with. However, it the real world author Steven Zalonga argues that “Dora” was singularly ineffective. The gun required 1420 troops to operate (about the sized of an infantry battalion) with an additional 2500 to prepare the firing site (which require two parallel tracks, and a third track for cranes) and 60 specialists. Zalonga notes there’s no evidence that “Dora” ever hit any of its targets; the average shot missed by 200-300 meters. The lack of success apparently didn’t deter Hitler; it’s noted elsewhere (Germany’s Secret Masterplan in WWII) that he proposed a battleship armed with eight of these things, only deterred when his advisers pointed out there was no harbor in Germany big enough to construct such a vessel. There’s also no information on what was actually involved in firing ‘Dora”; for example, how was it aimed and how was recoil handled? I imagine it might have been pushed along its curved dual track by switch engines for aiming; the difficulty of doing that precisely might explain why it was so inaccurate.

The “New Vanguard” book is mostly intended for military modelers (I wonder if anybody has ever gone to the trouble of building a “Dora” in an HO layout?) with a lot colorful illustrations. Esoteric but interesting; for more on German WWII railway guns see K5(E) Railgun.
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setnahkt | Jun 3, 2023 |
By this point in time, I suspect that Steve Zaloga can write these booklets in his sleep, though I personally appreciate the time he takes to explain his archival research and sources; more of Osprey's authors should take this step. As for the topic itself, the overarching question is how essential were the AFV's Washington and London supplied Moscow, as opposed to the fleets of trucks that helped motorize the Red Army. Short answer: Anything that Stalin could get for the defense of Moscow was valued. Once domestic production ramped up again, American and British tanks fell in the category of nice to have but not essential. From there, Zaloga digs deeper in what the Soviet assessment of each type they received, and how the vehicles were distributed. Most interesting to me was that the single Allied type that was most appreciated by the Soviets was the Valentine, which was actually used as a scout. This was closely followed by the diesel-powered M4A2 Sherman, most valued for its automotive reliability, and a commentary on the lack of durability of Soviet wartime production tanks.… (más)
 
Denunciada
Shrike58 | Mar 13, 2023 |

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Obras
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8,403
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101
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576
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