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Tank Tactics
- Explores the doctrinal, strategic, and tactical ideas behind World War II tank combat - Contains detailed maps and diagrams - Critiques the performances of commanders like George Patton, Bernard Montgomery, and others Focusing on five Allied tank operations from July to September 1944--Operations Goodwood, Cobra, Totalize, and Tractable and Patton's tank battles around Arracourt--armor expert Roman Jarymowycz draws on after-action reports, extensive battlefield reconnaissance, recently discovered battle performance reviews, and war diaries to evaluate the successes and failures of the art of armored warfare as practiced by Allied tank commanders in France in 1944.
400 pages, Paperback
First published December 17, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 20, 2013
picked up this book based solely on its title and who published it. Based on that, I expected a volume dedicated to “real” tank tactics, perhaps in a form of some sort of comparative analysis of low level tactics, equipment, training and real world experience of opposing sides. As it turns out, this book is a completely different animal and author of this book could not have chosen a more misleading title for this book if he tried to. Precious few pages (in my opinion, maybe five or six) deal with the actual tactics of armoured warfare on western front during 1944.
The real topic of this book is the implementation of armour on battlefields of World War Two at operational level, or more precisely during Normandy breakout attempts and subsequent allied race across France. Books dealing with this aspect of art of war are few and far between - it is a vast topic, encompassing a multitude of aspects, some of them quite mundane, other rather diffuse and difficult to define in clear and definite manner. Uniqueness of this book's topic makes it a valuable contribution to a library of any WWII buff all on its own.
Author deals with the subject matter by splitting it into three logical parts. In first section, Jarymowicz analyses the post-World War I development of armoured forces in armies of what would be major 'players' during the conflict. Theories of the time and how they translated in practical implementation in England, France, Germany, Soviet Union, United States and (oddly enough) Canada are dissected in detail. The author attempts here to compare and contrast different ideas and resulting doctrines. While a bit heavy on internal politics, this part of the book is something of an eye-opener, which answers a lot of questions reader may have about choice of the equipment used in World War II as well as about the rather varied quality of the leadership of armed forces during the conflict.
Next, the author, proceeds with an account of the actual events that took place during the period specified by the title of this book. It needs to be repeated - the narrative deals with the events on operational level, so those looking for exciting tank vs. tank combat descriptions are bound to be disappointed. Goodwood, Spring, Cobra and Totalize are picked apart and analysed in a search of explanation of failures and successes. I won't go into the details of Jarymowycz' analysis, but limit myself to observing that I don't believe I have ever had the pleasure of reading another book where Montgomery is so soundly and consistently trashed and belittled. If you're a fan of Monthy, you better stay away from this book. Of course other allied leaders are dealt with in similar harsh manner – Jarymowycz doesn’t have much good to say about the allied commanders, with the possible exception of Patton and some his lieutenants. To be honest though, it is hard to argue against author's ruthless and at times devastating critique.
In last part of his book Jarymowicz gives us his final analysis of deployment of armoured forces by Western allies during second part of 1944. In this section, besides the 'traditional' examination and comparison, the author does something rather unique and compares the doctrine and usage of armour by Western nations with that of Soviet Union. For me personally (after reading Glantz and Ericson) his conclusions weren't much of a surprise. I do however suspect that many, if not most readers from Western Europe and United States will find this part of the book as rather controversial, maybe even 'heretical'.
Personally, I find the topic of this book absolutely fascinating and was very pleasantly surprised when I realised what “Tank Tactics” was really about. It is therefore a great shame that I have now to say that this volume suffers from a couple of rather severe problems, all of them related to the writing style of Jarymowycz. To put it bluntly, the author doesn't strike me as a very talented writer. I found his style choppy, almost bullet-point-like. The flow of information felt disjointed, with abrupt, unannounced jumps between often unrelated topics every couple of paragraphs. This choppy impression was deepened by author's rather annoying tendency of using 'naked' personal quotes to emphasize the point he's trying to impress on the reader. I was a bit surprised over how disrupting this approach to quotations was for me - if I wanted to find out who said those words, I had to look up the reference at the end of the chapter, thus breaking the flow of often rather complex reasoning. Not a technique I would recommend for frequent usage in a book with this level of complexity.
'Tank Tactics: From Normandy to Lorraine' is a solid, in some respects maybe even ground-breaking contribution to literature about World War II. Its main merit consists of the fact that it is solely dedicated to a topic that is almost totally overlooked by “popular” authors writing about that conflict. The effort is however somewhat spoiled by a writing style that fails to engage and makes it difficult to absorb the information contained in this volume. Thus, not the easiest read, but nevertheless worth the effort if you're interested in something else than battle depictions and personal recollections.
The real topic of this book is the implementation of armour on battlefields of World War Two at operational level, or more precisely during Normandy breakout attempts and subsequent allied race across France. Books dealing with this aspect of art of war are few and far between - it is a vast topic, encompassing a multitude of aspects, some of them quite mundane, other rather diffuse and difficult to define in clear and definite manner. Uniqueness of this book's topic makes it a valuable contribution to a library of any WWII buff all on its own.
Author deals with the subject matter by splitting it into three logical parts. In first section, Jarymowicz analyses the post-World War I development of armoured forces in armies of what would be major 'players' during the conflict. Theories of the time and how they translated in practical implementation in England, France, Germany, Soviet Union, United States and (oddly enough) Canada are dissected in detail. The author attempts here to compare and contrast different ideas and resulting doctrines. While a bit heavy on internal politics, this part of the book is something of an eye-opener, which answers a lot of questions reader may have about choice of the equipment used in World War II as well as about the rather varied quality of the leadership of armed forces during the conflict.
Next, the author, proceeds with an account of the actual events that took place during the period specified by the title of this book. It needs to be repeated - the narrative deals with the events on operational level, so those looking for exciting tank vs. tank combat descriptions are bound to be disappointed. Goodwood, Spring, Cobra and Totalize are picked apart and analysed in a search of explanation of failures and successes. I won't go into the details of Jarymowycz' analysis, but limit myself to observing that I don't believe I have ever had the pleasure of reading another book where Montgomery is so soundly and consistently trashed and belittled. If you're a fan of Monthy, you better stay away from this book. Of course other allied leaders are dealt with in similar harsh manner – Jarymowycz doesn’t have much good to say about the allied commanders, with the possible exception of Patton and some his lieutenants. To be honest though, it is hard to argue against author's ruthless and at times devastating critique.
In last part of his book Jarymowicz gives us his final analysis of deployment of armoured forces by Western allies during second part of 1944. In this section, besides the 'traditional' examination and comparison, the author does something rather unique and compares the doctrine and usage of armour by Western nations with that of Soviet Union. For me personally (after reading Glantz and Ericson) his conclusions weren't much of a surprise. I do however suspect that many, if not most readers from Western Europe and United States will find this part of the book as rather controversial, maybe even 'heretical'.
Personally, I find the topic of this book absolutely fascinating and was very pleasantly surprised when I realised what “Tank Tactics” was really about. It is therefore a great shame that I have now to say that this volume suffers from a couple of rather severe problems, all of them related to the writing style of Jarymowycz. To put it bluntly, the author doesn't strike me as a very talented writer. I found his style choppy, almost bullet-point-like. The flow of information felt disjointed, with abrupt, unannounced jumps between often unrelated topics every couple of paragraphs. This choppy impression was deepened by author's rather annoying tendency of using 'naked' personal quotes to emphasize the point he's trying to impress on the reader. I was a bit surprised over how disrupting this approach to quotations was for me - if I wanted to find out who said those words, I had to look up the reference at the end of the chapter, thus breaking the flow of often rather complex reasoning. Not a technique I would recommend for frequent usage in a book with this level of complexity.
'Tank Tactics: From Normandy to Lorraine' is a solid, in some respects maybe even ground-breaking contribution to literature about World War II. Its main merit consists of the fact that it is solely dedicated to a topic that is almost totally overlooked by “popular” authors writing about that conflict. The effort is however somewhat spoiled by a writing style that fails to engage and makes it difficult to absorb the information contained in this volume. Thus, not the easiest read, but nevertheless worth the effort if you're interested in something else than battle depictions and personal recollections.
June 3, 2018
Jarymowycz to me seems to be out of step with a lot of his contemporaries, who ascribe to the revisionist school of interpreting the Normandy battles; he is critical (I would say overly critical) of the artillery, who I had always considered to be the best allied combat arm, and he seems to really, really like cavalry. Unlike his fellow Canadian John English (who wrote the forward for the Stackpole edition of Tank Tactics), Jarymowycz has a very low opinion of Montgomery's abilities. I confess, on some level I find convincing Jarymowycz's contentions that "the case may be made that the previous attacks [EPSOM-Carpiquet-WINDSOR:] were a series of individual attempts ending with GOODWOOD before Montgomery became truly strategic" (p.113) and that Montgomery had never intended for GOODWOOD to be merely a holding action, but instead the final big push, "a fourth El Alamein". (Though obviously if this was the case, it was a battle fought in a completely different manner than Alamein.)
However, Jarymowycz seems to me to overrate the potentialities of armor and armored divisions in Normandy, and to selectively rate the ability of AT guns, which, it seems to me, were the real killers of British tanks at GOODWOOD, not German armor. Conversely, despite the German skill at auftragstaktik (and Jarymowycz seems to me to imply by a quotation of von Manstein on p.84 that this is somehow a racial characteristic of Germans), they seem to have suffered grieviously when operating offensively against Allied anti-tank defenses even when they were relatively hastily prepared.
However, Jarymowycz seems to me to overrate the potentialities of armor and armored divisions in Normandy, and to selectively rate the ability of AT guns, which, it seems to me, were the real killers of British tanks at GOODWOOD, not German armor. Conversely, despite the German skill at auftragstaktik (and Jarymowycz seems to me to imply by a quotation of von Manstein on p.84 that this is somehow a racial characteristic of Germans), they seem to have suffered grieviously when operating offensively against Allied anti-tank defenses even when they were relatively hastily prepared.
October 9, 2015
The title was somewhat a misnomer: tactics are rarely brought up, in favor of the operational art. Broadly speaking, this is a critique of the Western Allies, saying that they didn't fight the war like the Soviets or Germans.
There were repeated minor typographical errors, especially in the first half of the book, and the maps were poor.
It was a good attempt to contrast Soviet practice with the Allies, but I really think it needed more clarity on what the Soviets did, as opposed to what they tried to do. The chapter on "Stavka in Normandy" did not, I think, sufficiently address the differences in how the Germans fought West vs. East Front, and how that would affect an Allied-Soviet comparison. The comparisons of Soviet and Allied attacks were not as developed as I would have liked.
The other thread running through the first half of the book was the development of American and Canadian armored forces and doctrine. The bureaucratic battle in which the US Cavalry branch relegated itself to obsolescence was something I hadn't read before in detail. The secondary effects of this, regarding the development of armored vehicles, is a "what-if" that deserves the attention.
As a critique, the author does praise the Allied generals who seemed to grasp the far-reaching effects of massed armored formations, and how they fought in Normandy and after. It is not all a criticism of Montgomery, Bradley, and others as unimaginative plodders.
There were repeated minor typographical errors, especially in the first half of the book, and the maps were poor.
It was a good attempt to contrast Soviet practice with the Allies, but I really think it needed more clarity on what the Soviets did, as opposed to what they tried to do. The chapter on "Stavka in Normandy" did not, I think, sufficiently address the differences in how the Germans fought West vs. East Front, and how that would affect an Allied-Soviet comparison. The comparisons of Soviet and Allied attacks were not as developed as I would have liked.
The other thread running through the first half of the book was the development of American and Canadian armored forces and doctrine. The bureaucratic battle in which the US Cavalry branch relegated itself to obsolescence was something I hadn't read before in detail. The secondary effects of this, regarding the development of armored vehicles, is a "what-if" that deserves the attention.
As a critique, the author does praise the Allied generals who seemed to grasp the far-reaching effects of massed armored formations, and how they fought in Normandy and after. It is not all a criticism of Montgomery, Bradley, and others as unimaginative plodders.
June 11, 2015
Interesting perspective on the evolution of the tank over the years, with a look at how various countries saw their use.
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