Introduction

The early Renault FT turned out to be an incredibly successful small tracked armoured vehicle or tank if you prefer. The Renault FT was in service for 25 years and served in both World Wars plus went into service with a large number of nations, so this could be said to be the first tank to achieve export success. Kagero has released one of their excellent Photo Sniper publications covering the Renault FT & M1917.

Review

This offering from Kagero as part of their Photo Sniper series and No 29 in that series. This offering is a soft back book with a good quality gloss card cover. There are around 200 pages in this title of roughly A4 size and features 24 archived photos, 132 colour photos, 132 profiles. The authors of the book are Jacek Szafranski and Samir Karmieh.

The book begins with 14 pages of text interspersed with period photographs. The text is in English only and I found the text a pleasant read that did not tax me. The areas covered here are:
Introduction
At the Front of the Great War
Painting France
Foreign Users
In Battle
Second World War
France 1940

The rest of the book is really made up of 2 sections. The first of these offers photographs of two preserved versions, one of which is I believe a running example of the vehicle. These photographs cover the vehicles from many angles and provide visual details that would not always be easily seen. The photographs also cover the interior of an exceptionally well preserved example that shows details I would not expect to still be seen in such high quality. This is a really beautiful section of the title and worth the cost of the title on its own.

By far the biggest segment of this title is the 3D section; that does not mean you need to sit there with a set of funny glasses on your head to get the 3D image as it is not a true 3D. What we have here are drawings covering everything from full vehicles through to individual segments of the vehicles. This is another great visual feast for anyone interested in the Renault FT & M1917 from Kagero.

Conclusion

This is a great title for anyone who has an interest in the Renault FT & M1917 family, but for the modeller it is everything you could want in the way of visual reference. The images both artistic and photographic provide everything the modeller needs in a single package.