James Kinnear

Packed with rare and unpublished photographs, this is a new history of the Red Army’s tracked artillery tractors that were pivotal to its success in World War II. The development of artillery tractors in the 1930s was integral to the industrial development of the Soviet Union. The tracked tractor plants at Chelyabinsk, Kharkov and Stalingrad were built specifically to industrialize the Soviet Union as well as to mechanize the Red Army, particularly the artillery. This new study by Russian armour expert James Kinnear tells the story of these artillery tractors. How they suffered horrendous losses in the opening months of the war but continued to be built and their numbers were bolstered by Lend-Lease tractors, primarily of American origin. At the end of the war, the same slow-moving and cumbersome artillery tractors that had served with the Red Army in the dark days of 1941 towed their heavy artillery pieces at a steady pace all the way to the streets of Berlin. There has been a resurgence of interest in recent years in these military workhorses and wrecks have been exhumed and restored, while Soviet factory and operational records have also become available. This new research is used here for the first time in English, alongside unpublished images, to tell the remarkable story of the artillery tractors that delivered Red Army artillery into combat throughout World War II.

A highly illustrated study of the T-72 main battle tank and variants, detailing its history from the Cold War Soviet Army through to the current War in Ukraine. The T-72 is one of the most recognisable tanks in the world. Produced in large quantities, it has seen service in numerous Middle Eastern and African conflicts, as well as the War in Yugoslavia and the current conflict in Ukraine. In this new study, respected Russian armour experts James Kinnear and Stephen “Cookie” Sewell tell the full story behind this iconic tank using extensive primary source material from Russian archives, much of which is appearing in English for the first time. The T-72 was originally developed in the late 1960s as a cheaper alternative to the recently introduced T-64 Main Battle Tank and entered service with the Soviet Army in 1974, becoming the most common tank used by the Warsaw Pact from the 1970s until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, with over 22,000 built for both domestic use and export. This new study contains over 300 photos detailing the history of the vehicle, as well as tables and data covering the weapons and systems used. It also covers related vehicles and systems such as artillery systems, engineer vehicles, bridge launchers, and recovery vehicles, as well as the unique heavy infantry support vehicles.