Tank: a history of the armoured fighting vehicle,

by Kenneth John Macksey

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Genres: History, Military Fiction, Nonfiction, Reference, War

160 pages, Hardcover

First published October 15, 1970

About the author

British author and historian who specialized in military history and military biography, particularly of the Second World War. Macksey was commissioned in the Royal Armoured Corps and served during the Second World War (earning the Military Cross under the command of Percy Hobart). Macksey later wrote the (authoritative) biography of Hobart.Macksey gained a permanent commission in 1946, was transferred to the Royal Tank Regiment in 1947, reached the rank of major in 1957 and retired from the Army in 1968.

Amongst many other books, Macksey wrote two volumes of alternate history, one, entitled Invasion, dealt with a successful invasion of England by Germany in 1940 and the other describing a NATO–Warsaw Pact clash in the late 1980s. The latter book was done under contract to the Canadian Forces and focuses on the Canadian role in such a conflict. He was an editor and contributor to Greenhill's Alternate Decisions series since 1995.

In Macksey's Guderian – Panzer General, he refuted the view of historian Sir Basil Liddell-Hart regarding Hart's influence on the development of German Tank Theory in the years leading up to 1939.

Reviews

[Jason Fawkes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found a copy in a charity shop of a book that I read cover to cover on multiple occasions in my primary school library - with it's explanation of the development of armour, and illustrations of vehicles both famous and incredibly obscure. This includes the T28 assault tank, which almost slipped from history, and a TOG 1, which seems to me, when sitting in the cinema a few years later, to be an inspiration for the Liberty tank based Indiana Jones 3 tank prop.
Alongside the page of weird looking military vehicles in Richard Scarry's Things that Move (I learnt in this book that many of them were real, and the history behind them) this book directly led to a life long interest in the history of armoured warfare, so my rating reflects it's personal importance to me.

[Kirby Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good (if dated) introduction to armored vehicles.

[Steve LaForest]

read - summer of 1972 or 1973