Introduction

The modern Royal Armoured Engineers are a truly special formation within the British Army. This publication provides in-depth coverage with written information and photographs showing the historical background, the tactics, the organisation and active service of a Regiment Royal Engineers in Germany and on international missions with a special focus on the specialised vehicle pool.

Review

The books released by Tankograd publishing are usually within the 60 to 70 page count using a good quality glossy paper for the presentation of the contents. These are protected by a card cover that does a pretty good job as long as the books are not abused by liquids and the like. The pages are held in place with staples which is possibly the only weak aspect of the books as a whole. This particular offering has no less than three authors who are Daniel Nowak, Simon Copley-Smith and Tim Matzold. This offering is a duel language release with German text on the right and English on the left of each page.

The British Royal Engineers really came into their own with General Hobbart’s funnies during World War 2. The 79th Armoured Division helped clear obstacles such as mines and bunkers and even put flame throwing tanks into the field. The clearing of obstacles is still tackled today by the Royal Engineers today in custom designed vehicles such as Titan and Trojan and this title from Tankograd looks at vehicles such as these and their users in the field with 32 Engineer Regiment.

In addition to the tracked vehicles Tankograd has also provided photographic detail on the wheeled vehicles used by 32 Engineer Regiment and provided a good level of detail on them, everything from the humble Land Rover that has served so well for longer than I have been on the planet, to the trucks used for recovery and mounting cranes that allows and enables this unit to complete so many tasks unaided by the rest of the army.

The photographs in the title are very pleasing to me being of good quality and in colour, the focus is spot on and enables the viewer to pick out details they may be looking for. If it is the photographs that sell the book then it is the captions that make them worth the money; the captions are provided in both German and English and at what I think if as the meat to the bones and provide information that you could not get from the image alone.

Conclusion

This offering from Tankograd is a must for anyone interested in the Royal Engineers or for that matter vehicles beyond the ordinary. The text is well written and the photographs are first rate. The captions provided with each image are what make this book for me as it lifts the photographs to a higher informative level.