Introduction

This book covering the United States Airborne Division 1942 - 2018 is part of a series of titles from Pen and Sword as part of their ‘Images at War’ series. These books cover the subject matter mostly in photographs and so offer a great visual reference for anyone interested in the subject matter regardless of the reason for that interest. For the modeller these books represent a cornicopia when it comes to visual information.

Review

This offering from Pen and Sword is part of the ‘Images at War’ series. This series of books are soft backed offerings having a good card cover with a very good spine to the book that keeps the contents in good order. This book covering the United States Airborne Division 1942 - 2018 has been authored by Michael Green; Michael Green is a published author who specialises in armoured vehicles. He lives in Dale City, California. Michael is ranked number 10 in Amazon's most Popular Authors in History list.. The contents of this title are provided over 216 pages of good quality semi gloss paper.

The contents are presented in the following sections:
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1 – Getting it Together
Chapter 2 – Late-War Action
Chapter 3 – The Cold War Era
Chapter 4 – Post Cold War

The dedicated text in this offering is fairly substantial for a book in this series, the text is well written and informative following a logical progression on the Airborne. with that said Michael Green does follow the conventional layout I have come to expect from the Images of War series, just with added writing.

The first chapter of the book is a mix of period and re-enactor photographs in colour and black and white. The pictures here cover a very broad spectrum from training to the logistics of getting the troops to where they are needed. In this respect the transport aircraft used to also get heavier equipment to the needed locations is also covered, items such as the jeep and PACK Howitzer. This section also covers the Airborne's first blooding if you will and the lessons learnt from it.

The next area of the book looks at Operation Market or Market Garden as I know it. We are all aware that this Operation was a failure, but we need to remember that the failure was due to the armour being unable to get to the location, not a failure on the part of the paratroopers. after Operation Market Garden the US Airborne were pretty much used as infantry troops, and there cannot be many who do not think Bastogne and the US Airborne who put up a fantastic fight in terrible conditions.

The third chapter of this title does a good job of looking at the role of the Airborne in the nuclear age. the involvement of the troops in Korea and Vietnam is covered here as well and brings us to what cab ne considered the current day.

The last chapter of this book looks at the involvement of the US Airborne in Iraq and Afghanistan along with some of the toys they get to use. I will say I was most interested in the sections covering World War 2, but I appreciate how the book follows the story through to today.

The captions that accompany each and every photograph provide a very good level of information. It is my opinion that Michael Green deserves high praise in regards to these captions as I found them very informative and they provided everything I wanted from them as a reader.

Conclusion

The story as a whole from 1942 to 2018 is a broad area to cover in the available space, but the author has done a good job of that. I have a particular interest in the Battle of the Bulge and so the section on Bastogne was particularly interesting for me, but the area cover the events of World War 2 generally was the area the drew me the most. The Cold War section did not really draw me in despite being old enough to remember the Vietnam War. The last chapter covering Iraq and Afghanistan is another segment that I enjoyed.