Pen & Sword- Tanks & Armor at Kursk 1943

First Impressions

The book is about 10 in tall by 7 in wide with 120 pages. It's a paperback book with sturdy, high-quality pages.  It’s full of pictures and some text and divided into about five reading sections with five appendices. The pictures are large. Of course, it's wartime photos so there's blurred pictures taken from a distance that kind of thing.   But they're unique shots and a variety of distance and closeup shots.  For me the key is seeing new pictures from the period, some markings and camo patterns.  There's about two pictures per page which makes it very nice to see the details as much as you can. Lots of good pictures. They give an idea of stowage and placement of items in around the tanks. 

It starts off in Chapter 1 where the author gives a brief overview/setup of the Battle of Kursk in 1943. The second chapter talks more about the preparations for the attack and this is mostly from the German side. There are very few Soviet armor photographs in the book, I was hoping for more Russian equipment.   Most of the pictures are tracked vehicles, halftracks and some recon vehicles.  Great work to make these pictures larger in print and easier to see the details.  There are a lot of good photos with riders, stowage, and standing figures which are also nice to see.

Chapter 3 has a brief two-page explanation of what's going on as the battle begins.  For me, this is nice. I like that this book is straightforward and doesn't have an incredible amount of detail, so it's a good read, especially for those folks that aren't familiar with the battle and what took place.  It's not overwhelming.  If that is desired there are other sources for that info.  Again, full of pictures with about two per page.

Chapter 4 talks about one of the particular battles: Prokhorovka. This one has a much bigger write-up on this section of the battle but continues on with some excellent pictures. Some T-34 pictures make the cut in this chapter.

In chapter 5, the final chapter, the author sums up in short order the results of the battle. Several pictures of blown-up tanks as well as what you could surmise as retreating troops and vehicles on the move. It's a very short section compared to the rest of the other sections.

The appendices start with the German order of battle to review all the German units.  Then the SS units followed by the Red Army units.  Appendix 4 is a unique look at a breakdown of a typical panzer battalion in 1943, which breaks down the different kind of units and platoons of each, as well as the men expected under each unit.  As mentioned earlier, I like this as its simplistic approach where, in this part of the book, prior military service is not required to read and understand this information.

Conclusion

I thought this book was a great simplistic overview of the battle.  In my opinion, a couple simplistic maps could also have been included as that would make the book really pop and give you a perspective of where everybody is and what they're talking about. I think it would have been helpful to see some of that, but the pictures are really great, and the text straightforward.  It gives the modeler and or novice some ideas on stowage setup and how people interact around the vehicles.

Overall, the key here is it's a simple read and you don't have to be an expert in the conflict to be able to absorb what's in this book. So, I highly recommend this for those that are interested in the German details but not immersed in troop movements and battle lines and so forth on a day-to-day basis. Great book. Look to forward to seeing more in this series

Highly Recommended for modelers and historians.

Thanks go out to Casemate Publishing for this publication review.

Reviewed by Ashley Abernathy

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