High Speed Tractor
A visual history of the U.S.Army's Tracked Artillery Prime Movers
By David Doyle and Pat Stansell
112 pages soft cover.

Ampersand Publishing.
235 N.E.6th Avenue
Delray Beach, Florida 33483
U.S.A

Review by Terry Ashley

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This book from Ampersand Publishing is in the same soft cover format as their Allied & Axis series and is entirely in black and white apart from the front and back cover photos.

It covers in detail the series of high speed artillery tractors used by the U.S.Army during WWII and way beyond for the later M8A1 type with the last produced in 1955 and remained in service for some time after that.

The types covered in the book are the M2 7-ton HST used primarily by the Army Air Force, the M4 18-ton HST, M5 13-ton HST, M6 38-ton HST and lastly the M8A1 HST all designed to tow artillery pieces and carry some associated ammunition and crews.

All the photos are B&W as mentioned and are a mixture of in-service shots with additional close-up walk-around type photos of surviving examples to give a very good coverage of each type.

Many of the in-service photos are one to a page and mostly semi-close-up allowing good coverage of the details and importantly showing the vehicle storage and crew uniforms as well in some cases the ordnance being towed and have excellent diorama possibilities.

All the close-up walk-around shots are of preserved vehicles with again photos ranging from one to a page to four to a page with excellent detail shots around the exteriors covering the suspensions and hull details as well as interior shots of the seating, front instruments and other details that are quite visible on these mostly open HSTs.

The first 3 pages has an introduction with brief history and description of each type followed by 25 pages on the M2 7-ton HST, 25 pages on the M4 18-ton HST, 25 pages on the M5 13-ton HST, 23 pages on the M6 38-ton HST and 12 pages on the M8A1 HST allowing a very good coverage of each type.

Sample pages

This is superb book on the U.S.Army High Speed Tractors and will be an indispensable reference for anyone remotely interested in these vehicles as everything apart from a detailed technical breakdown is included.

Highly recommended

Thanks to Ampersand for the review copy.
Allied & Axis Journals are available from most of the PMMS Sponsor shops