From the time Armored Fighting Vehicles, more commonly known as tanks, first appeared on the battlefield in World War I, their principal enemy was the gun. Until March 1918 this meant the main danger to the early British and French gun-armed tanks came from field artillery, mounted on wheels, often protected by an armored shield.
But then, the Germans developed their own machines and on April 24 the inevitable happened. History was made at Villers-Bretonneux in France as British and German tanks clashed in battle for the first time. The tank-versus- tank engagement was at once recognized by battlefield commanders as a potent method of dealing with the emergent tank threat to their armies.
Produced in the same style as the popular Aircraft Versus Aircraft, this superbly illustrated study of tank tactics and strategy explains the totally international development and deployment of the tank against itself and a background of technical innovations and growing threats from field artillery, mines, grenades, aircraft and missiles.
In conclusion, Kenneth Macksey vividly demonstrates with reference to the Gulf War, to a specially constructed tank engagement and to the ‘Vehicle of the Future’ that the tank still, at the end of the century, retains its position as a key anti-tank weapon system, albeit in a very different form to that first demonstrated in 1918.