Casemate Illustrated Special

U.S. Army Tractor Trucks and Semitrailers

This new title from the well regarded Casemate Illustrated Special series examines the unsung warhorses used on all fronts to facilitate vital logistical and other varied duties. Although not mentioned in the title, this book specifically addresses the tractor trailers of World War II, with just a couple of pages on post-war vehicles.

The volumes in this series that I have previously examined were all found to be of very good quality in terms of content and presentation.

Vital Statistics

Format - hardcover, portrait format

Page Count - 160 high gloss pages

Size - 9” x 11.5”

Photos - mostly Black and White, some in full color

Tables / drawings / diagrams - many production and technical specification tables, some labeled component diagrams

All text and captions are in English.

What's between the Covers?

Above - the book’s table of contents. The tractors are covered in a methodical manner from lightest to heaviest capacity.

Above - typical chapter opening pages. Clearly written descriptive text with good photos of the vehicles is consistent from chapter to chapter.

There are quite a few quite informative tables found throughout this volume as seen in the image above, with interesting production data as well as performance and other values listed.

The photographs presented in this book are generally quite well selected, of great interest, and being crisp and bright. The size of them is usually generous enough that vehicle details can be made out. There is a nice mix of “at the factory” images along with in-action photos taken world wide. Most images are in black and white, but there are a few full color images here and there, as seen above upper left side.

The variety of tractor trailer rigs seen is much wider than I’d have thought, and the author has done a great job of bringing them to us in this volume. Above right side can be seen some fascinating images of water and gasoline tankers in use, to the left a shoe repair station.

There are interesting images to found on every turn of the page of this volume.

Above - heavy wreckers get their due in this book, with some terrific in-action style photos in this chapter. Dioramas anyone?

Above - the iconic M26 tank recovery vehicle, one of the few vehicles covered by this volume to be commonly available in kit form. There are many interesting vehicles shown in this volume that are just begging to be manufactured in kit form….

The trailer part of the tank transporter duo gets it own treatment in this book, including excellent photos of it in action, and a good table on it’s production numbers. 

“Special” semitrailers including those doing interesting Signal Corps work gets their own chapter. Again, there are terrific photographs of this rarely seen equipment.

The book’s final chapter addresses the many types of dollies used for linking trailers to standard trucks or to other trailers to make trains. 

The final information provided by this book comes in appendix form, tables of total production of both the trucks and the semitrailers.

Conclusions

I found this book to be surprisingly interesting, as I’d never before given much thought to this class of vehicles. This book opened my eyes to the various big tractors and trailers used by the military in WWII, and the important roles they played.

The text in this volume is well written, clearly describing the development, needs for the vehicles, and their wartime employment. The photo captions are similarly good. The photos themselves are of generally very high quality, and are quite interesting. 

This book is a very good look at a category of military vehicles that despite their true importance, has managed to be somewhat under appreciated and not very well documented. 

Highly Recommended!

Thanks to Casemate Publishing for the review copy

Reviewed by Chuck Aleshire, AMPS Chicagoland

AMPS 2nd Vice President, Midwest Region

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