5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent treatment on U.S. Tank Destroyers in WWII, 2004-10-27
Steven Zaloga is one of my favorite writers on AFVs and Tanks. This new series does not disappoint. I was particularly interested in the performances of the M10 and M36 in combat, and Zaloga describes those in detail, in particular the inadequacies of the 76mm gun in combat and the effectiveness of the 90mm, especially against the German Panther and Tiger tanks in the Ardennes. What I really liked were the little charts that Zaloga inserts throughout the book, which shows statistics such as the armor penetration comparisons of the 76mm & 90mm, the production numbers of the M10 and M36 in 1943-1944, the combat losses, and the conversion numbers of M10s into M36s. As usual, the Vanguard series offers great B & W photographs as well as colored illustrations of the vehicles in the middle. Zaloga always includes a good bibliography and notes on the color plates. Zaloga is able to pack it a lot of information in 48 pages of text. This is an excellent treatment of the M10 & M36. If you're an armor enthusiast or a modeler, you'll enjoy this book. Highly recommended!
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
A Good History of the M10 Tank Destroyer..., 2004-02-03
This book describes American tank destroyer development from the unauspicious beginnings with the cheesy M5 that constantly broke down, various prototypes that weren't put in production, and halftrack mounted guns to the effective M10 and M18 76mm gun tank destroyers. Several pages describe the conversion of M10s with a new turret armed with a 90mm gun which became the M36 tank destroyer, the shortage of M10 hulls requiring some to be completed with Sherman tank hulls, as well as the British M10C Achilles armed with the much vaunted 17-Pounder gun.After reading this book, I feel it should have been titled "The M10 Tank Destroyer...Oh Yeah, And The M36 Too". While I had no idea before reading this book that M36 tank destroyers are mostly converted M10s and also are not officially called 'Jackson', the deployment history of the 90mm M36 series feels abbreviated. Like Zaloga's M4A3(76mm) Sherman 1943-1965 book, post-war use is sparse, with only a page and a quarter of text but several nice pictures and caption commentary filling in for the laconic state of the post-war section. I certainly would have appreciated more details on how some of these foreign customers of the M10 and M36 used them; instead, the nations are described in passing, such as the Western European allies, Egypt, South Korea, Pakistan, and Yugoslavia, with no unit descriptions or how they fared in battle. It really is unfortunate that considering the Zaloga quality of work of the development and deployment of the M10 76mm gun tank destroyer, the M36 90mm gun tank destroyer appears like an afterthought that was appended merely to flesh out a book about the M10.