Introduction

Canadian military vehicles played a big role in World War 2, with the supply of CMP, Canadian Military Pattern, vehicles and other vehicles being provided to many of the Allied forces including equipping the Canadian forces. The CMP vehicles were the collaboration of both General Motors and Ford, with many manufacturer plants in Canada converted to support the war effort. Many other companies provided a vast range of other vehicles, to include those with two wheels to the Canadian military.

A new book from Service Publications, Drive to Victory - Catalogue of Canadian Military Vehicles, provides the first volume of a much needed full reference book on the CMP family and other vehicles used by Canada.

Book

Drive to Victory - Catalogue of Canadian Military Vehicles, Volume 1
Service Publications
Author: Clive M. Law
ISBN: 978-1-927822-06-7
242 Pages - Hard Cover

Review

I have always been a big fan of Canadian Military Pattern vehicles and Canadian soft skin vehicles, and was glad when Service Publication announced the new book Drive to Victory - Catalogue of Canadian Military Vehicles, and eager to get my hands on it. Well at first glance, I was not disappointed. The 11" by 9" hard cover book is chalked full of pages, 242, and hundreds of images, many not seen prior.

The book is broken down into 10 chapters, as follows:
Introduction
Chassis
Bodies
Vehicle Codes
Passenger Cars and Two-Wheeled Vehicles
Dump Trucks
Engineer's Technical Vehicles
Wrecker Vehicles
Personnel Vehicles
General Service Vehicles

The introduction to the book provides a good detailed description on requirement and development of military vehicles in Canada. This explanation starts at the end of World War 1, and the developments that lead to Canadian designed CMP and use of other commercial vehicles between the wars. There is even a great description of the distribution and delivery of the vehicles joining the war effort in Europe.

While the book does focus mostly on the design and development of the CMP family, there are sections covering commercial vehicles used, to include motorcycles. As for the CMP family, there are chapters devoted to the development of the chassis, and complete listing, including diagram, of the different bodies used on the CMP vehicles. This, in its self is a great reference to the different vehicles used. There is even a chapter dedicated to understanding the vehicle codes used.

The book then moves onto a section detailing all of the vehicles used by the Canadian military, as per the chapter list. Each vehicle includes up to three different images with descriptions of the operation role, body details, variants (in some cases), and the quantity of the vehicle used. The sections also include some experimentation vehicles, even though they were never to see the field.

The descriptions are very informative, and the images, many of which I had not seen prior, are all clear and provide great overall views of the vehicles. I would have to give kudos to Service Publication and Clive Law, as the book even provides good images of vehicles that were one offs. A great bonus in the books is a list of all equipment that was included with each vehicle delivered to the dispersal sites in England.

Conclusion

This is a must have for fans of World War 2 Canadian military vehicles, and should prove to be a great reference for vehicle fans and modellers. The book is chalked full of informative information with descriptive text and great images. And the good news is, this is only volume 1, with volume 2 to contain information on Artillery trucks, Medical vehicles, Trailer, and much more. I highly recommend this book.