About the Author

David Doyle is a familiar name and a prolific author of military history books. His published works have appeared in periodicals aimed at the hobby of historic military vehicle restoration. By 1999, this included regular features in leading hobby publications, appearing regularly in US, British and Polish magazines. Since 2003, over 200 of his books have been published.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1: The New Generation of Guns
• Chapter 2: Towing and Supplying the Canons
• Chapter 3: Field Service

Summary

This is excellent book as part of the Legends of Warfare series, which currently consists of 51 titles. Chapter One discusses the development of the 155mm gun M1 ‘Long Tom’ starting with its roots in the Canon de 155mm Grande Puissance Filloux (GPF), which was adopted by the US as the M1917. David Doyle discusses how the US Army Caliber Board described the ‘ideal gun’ for the future. This would be the 155mm M1 ‘Long Tom’. The photos are outstanding quality and show the gun in various stages of testing at the Aberdeen Proving Ground and in use at various bases.

Chapters Two and Three cover the modes of transportation for the ‘Long Tom’. This is an excellent chapter. David Doyle shows the reader various tractors, such as the M4 High Speed Tractor, and trucks like the M125 10-ton truck. The reader gets a very good sense of how these guns were moved around through different terrain from the rich and detailed photographs showing the ‘Long Tom’ in use.

With each photograph David Doyle provides a brief description. This allows the reader to gain a huge amount of knowledge about the ‘Long Tom’ without needing to read pages of text.

This book is undoubtedly an excellent resource for model builders. It contains photographs that capture so much detail that the book could be thought of as a walk-around book. I highly recommend this book. It is a great value for the money and should be resource that the model builder could use over and over again.

Thank you to Schiffer Publishing, Inc. for providing a copy of this fine book for review, and thank you to IPMS for the opportunity.