Introduction

The following introduction is as provided by Tankograd Publishing
The Commercial Pattern Low Mobility; Commercial Pattern Improved Low Mobility; Medium Mobility; and Improved Medium Mobility truck ranges were designed by Foden to meet British Army requirements for road-going cargo, fuel and tipper trucks, off-road-capable tractors, limbers and recovery vehicles, and an off-road variant of the Demountable Rack Offload and Pickup System (DROPS). The in-service lives of vehicles began during the last two decades of the Cold War. They then soldiered on during the post-Cold War decade, seeing service with multinational missions such as in the Balkans. In the case of some vehicle types, they even continued into the new millennium and were employed in counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. This publication grants an overview on all variants describing their technology, history and active service.

Review

This offering from Tankograd Publishing is one of their duel language offerings, German on the left and English on the right of the page. The book consists of 64 pages with a glossy finish and printed in portrait format, the pages are protected by a glossy card cover with further relevant printed information on the insides faces. The text in this offering is split over several areas of the title. The text looks to covers the entire FODEN family in military service with the British Army. The author of this offering from Tankograd Publishing is Carl Schulze.

Anyone who is 20 plus years of age who has ever seen the British Army at work will be familiar with the FODEN truck. If it was towed, carried, eaten or fired, chances are it was taken there by one of the FODEN family of trucks. The FODEN started serving with the British Army from the late 1970’s until 2007 when replacement with MAN trucks began. This title from Tankograd Publishing appears to cover all of the tasks that this truck family was used for, everything from dropping of troops and supplies to recovering broken down vehicles.

The text begins with looking at the introduction of the FODEN as an all in package for the British Military and its procession that kept it in service for 30 years. One of the attributes that made this truck family such a great addition to the British was the number of spares being spread widely across the vehicles and so making parts cheaper and less spares being required on the shelf. Another aspect that made these trucks affordable was that they were militarized civilian vehicles. These facts are raised in the book, but it does not really go into detail on the subject.

This offering from Tankograd Publishing is lavished with photographs of the trucks performing their roles. Everything is here form the early entry vehicles that were basic goffer trucks taking supplies from A to B and back again, examples of vehicles carrying dry and chilled goods are present; maybe not that exciting but just as important as bullets. You also get some nice images of the tipper truck. The title then continues through the fuel trucks and other specific task vehicles such as heavy artillery tractor. One image of interest here is a very rare fibreglass cab truck as opposed to the usual metal bodied.

The photographs in the title are again very good despite being an aspect I was concerned about; I have noticed that a lot of images from the 1970’s and 1980’s that are in colour can have a fuzzy appearance to them, I am really pleased to see that Tankograd has avoided that problem with this title. The photographic mix is very good and provides a good level of detail on all subjects despite the limited size of the book. The captions provided with each picture are clear and precise while also being supplied in both German and English.

Conclusion

Trucks are not the most exciting aspect of our military forces, but without them wars and battles would be very difficult to conduct. You have the food and ammunition that the individual soldier or vehicle can carry, and in the case of vehicles the fuel they can carry, I am sure many of you are aware of just how limited the distance a tank can travel is on internal fuel. This title provides a good level of detail over a broad subject area. So this title covers an area that should be replicated in most dioramas.