Desert Armour

"Although much attention has been paid to the initial campaigns in the North African desert, by the standards of the Second World War they were relatively small affairs. North Africa was ostensibly the primary theatre of war for the British Empire in this period, but only two of 37 British and two of 17 Commonwealth operational divisions were actively engaged there by the end of 1941. Germany had just three of its 250 divisions, with a total of 32.000 troops, fighting in North Africa. The logistical challenges meant that both sides faced considerable difficulty in amassing combat power for a decisive operation in such a remote, austere theatre. However in 1942 both sides committed additional reinforcements to the combat zone in the hope of achieving a knock-out blow. The scale of armoured operations increased dramatically, with several actions pitting corps-sized armoured formations against each other. Both sides also began the transition to true medium tanks, while the integration of air, artillery, and engineer support also evolved rapidly. American tanks made their first appearance on North African battlefields in late 1941 and one year later, US armoured units begain to arrive, adding the need for joint operations doctrine into the mix as well. In this second volume of Desert Armour, Robert Forczyk begins with Rommel's second offensive in Libya and concludes 17 months later with the Axis defeat in Tunisia. Throughout this period, armoured spearheads not only led the campaigns in Libya, Egypt and Tunisia, but established a model for future air-ground high-intensity offensive operations, much of which is still valid in the 21st century. While the tanks of 1940-43 now seem technically archaic the operational principles and tactics used by modern armoured units descend directly from the methods employed in these campaigns in the desert." --