From 1940 until the end of the Second World War, the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) provided stealthy reconnaissance patrols in Western Europe and North Africa. The vehicle most commonly associated with these groups, particularly when they were in North Africa, is the Chevrolet truck depicted in this kit. Captured weapons were often used and, in this case, we have a 2cm Italian Breda cannon.

The kit is composed of 72 parts on three sprues of soft grey plastic and one decal sheet. The parts are fragile, especially the 2cm Breda cannon, so care should be taken when removing them from the sprue. There’s a color profile and decals for two vehicles.

The US M10 was originally developed as a tank destroyer while the StuG III was a turretless, low-profiled tracked vehicle developed for direct fire support for infantry formations. This book discusses how these two fighting vehicles went beyond their respective design missions when called upon. It also covers how they fought one another during the 11 month campaign on the battlefields of northwest Europe in 1944-45.

I found the book to be well thought out with a very coherent outline. It’s well written with easy to understand explanations. It has beautiful color maps, paintings, cutaway artwork, and a wide range of period b&w photographs.

The book itself is well printed with a gum binding. The print is easy to read and the photographs are very clear. The artwork and cutaway illustrations are colorful and honestly represented. The maps and charts are rendered so that any layperson can understand them.

Osprey Publishing has a series known as “General Military” which has one-off books on different topics. This one is dedicated to the Tiger tank, although reading the book also provides a good insight on armored vehicle operations, as it includes descriptions of how the Tiger tanks worked together with Panzer III and half-track armored carrier personnel.

The book is divided into nine chapters. The first three chapters (Development, Organization, Mobility) basically evaluate the tank’s performance as a vehicle and how it was used in combination with other AFV. The following three chapters (Firepower, Armor, Combat), cover the combat experience of the tank, with specifics sections for combat in each front (Western, Eastern, and Africa), while the final three (Maintenance, Under Fire, Conclusions) cover different aspects from the recovery of those vehicles to how they performed in the last years of the war, facing upgraded allied armor vehicles.

Dragon's latest Stug III release is marketed as a December ‘44 production time frame version. If you follow the instructions, you won't build a vehicle from the Dec 44 production run, but a somewhat jumbled mix with early, mid, and late production features. Fortunately, if you know what you are looking for, the kit includes the parts to build what is commonly accepted as a late ‘44/early 45 vehicle. With some exceptions.

The parts are molded in light gray styrene with crisp details and no noticeable flash. There are some very fine details like the fender tread pattern, hull weld beads, and rough texture on the cast mantle (Topfblende). This release is a bit of a mix-and-match from their earlier StuG III releases (notably the CH May ‘44 Mid-Late Production) with a few additional sprues from their StuG IV kits. A good portion of these parts won't be used and are blued out on the front instruction sheet. But don't be too hasty, you'll need some of those pieces.

This one falls in the "that's an odd duck" category. This was a Japanese attempt – and a successful one, at that – to create a truly amphibious tank. The IJN developed the Type 2 Ka-Mi tank for invading Pacific islands that did not have adequate port facilities to handle regular tanks. The tank had removable pontoons fore and aft for flotation and to avoid shipping any water; they added a trunk for the air intake and a tower over the commander's turret hatch. It could do around 10 km/hr in the water, being driven by two propellers at the rear, and had a range of 150 km. These were probably test results in a bay or on a lake. I could find no information on its performance on the open seas, so I'd take that range and speed with a grain of salt. The vehicle was never used operationally in its amphibious mode, serving mostly as a dug-in pillbox on various Pacific islands.