PMMS

book NATO Trucks & Vehicles in detail
Present Vehicle Line No.13
František Korán, Jan Horák
Wings & Wheels Publications.
Published by RAK, Czech Republic.
ISBN 80-86416-57-7

108 pages all in colour.

Review by Terry Ashley


This volume from Wings and Wheels Publications covers an often overlook aspect of military operations, that of the logistic and support vehicles with the 108 colour pages being a photo coverage of the NATO “Collective Effort 2004” Logistic Exercise.

The book is entirely in colour with a bare minimum of English text including a brief rundown on each category and the photo captions with most photos being semi-close up external views of the various vehicles from different angles that give an overall look but still included many details. A couple of the vehicles get a more detailed look with close-up details which I’ll mention as we go along with the book broken up in the following chapters.

Command Cars (pages 3-15)
Trucks (pages 16-57)
Special Vehicles and Loaders (pages 58-65)
Tanks & Recovery Tanks (pages 66-89)
MB838 Engine (pages 90-93)
Water Treatment (pages 94-99)
Jobs in Terrain (pages 100-105)
Rail Transport (pages 106-108)

Command Cars:
Vehicles covered are the Bundeswehr and Dutch Class “G” Mercedes 4x4, the French P4 Peugeot 4x4, Polish HONKER and Iveco off road vehicles, a couple of Landrover 110s of the Czech Army with a few shots inside the rear of the LRD110 Ambulance.

Trucks:
This is the largest section and starts with 9 pages on the US Army M915A3 Militarized Freightliner Tractor with close-up walk around of the cab and trailer and while not part of the exercise still made an appearnace. This is followed by the Bundeswehr 8x8 MAN in a couple of configurations, the MAN 8x8 off road vehicle, FAUN SLT 56 and some nice shots of the 30-ton FAUN V30 Truck Crane, the 20-ton Liebherr Truck Crane and the 10-ton Liebherr Truck Crane. These vehicles will be of great interest to the Engineer vehicle fans with shots from various angles for a good coverage.

French Army trucks include a few different Renault Multi-lift and hook loaders plus various Scania and Volvo trucks of the Belgian and Norwegian Army along with some nice shots of the big Mercedes Tank Transporter of the Polish Army.

Special Vehicles and Loaders:
This section has some really strange looking vehicles obviously designed for functionality and not looks with various fork lifts, loaders and small utility vehicles that again will be of interest to the engineer vehicle fan.

Tanks & Recovery Tanks:
These pages are devoted to the tracked vehicles involved in the exercise including the T-72 and T-72M4 CZ, the BMP-1, the VT-72 and VT-55 recovery tanks, BMP-2 recovery vehicle, Leopard 1A5 and 2A4 and Bergepanzer 3 which includes additional close-up walk around shots of the interior.

MB838 Engine:
These four pages have superb close-up shots of the Leopard 1 Mercedes-Benz 838 power pack after being removed from the tank and have some excellent details with shots from all angles.

Water Treatment:
This section has some interesting details of Bundeswehr water treatment equipment from large truck mounted units to small portable units that again offer excellent details for anyone wanting the scratch these to include in dioramas.

Jobs in Terrain:
These pages are basically in-action shots of various actual recovery operations during the exercise including some rollovers, traffic accidents and loading tanks onto the transporters which are of good overall interest, anyone for a Leopard 1A5 sitting on its turret roof after a “minor” prang.

Rail Transport:
The last couple of pages show the various vehicles loaded on rail flatbeds for transport back to their respective countries after the exercise and offer some interesting details.

Sample Pages
bookbook
bookbook

Conclusion:
This is an excellent collection of vehicles not usually covered with most photos being close enough to provide good details and the book will be of interest to the general modeller as well and those interested in the logistics side of the operations.

Highly recommended.

Thanks to František of Wings & Wheels Publications for the review book.



Page Created December 24, 2005

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