This is a nicely produced book which is probably the only book you will ever need on the Churchill tank gun versions.
The book starts with the story of the A20 developed by Harland and Wolff before moving onto the Vauxhall A22 tank, the A22 being the Churchill. The story covers the gestation of the tank in great detail, the various twists and turns and development through to production. The Churchill was a very unusual design and the development process was far from trouble free. The book goes into quite a bit of detail on how the tank was manufactured, the use of casting and welding, engine development, the unusual suspension and wheel arrangement and of course armament.
As an infantry tank the Churchill was heavily armoured but rather slow, British tank doctrine of the time was based on developing heavily armoured infantry tanks to work with infantry and faster, more lightly armoured cruiser tanks for mobile warfare. The Churchill was extremely well protected, especially the later heavy Churchill tanks. Despite being slow, the odd track and wheel arrangement gave it superb mobility and it could climb hills and cross obstacles better than most other tanks of the period.
As if the track and wheel arrangement wasn't unusual enough, the first models were provided with a 3" howitzer as secondary armament where the hull machine gun might be expected along with a 2 pdr gun in the turret. The howitzer was replaced by a Besa machine gun on the Mk.II and later models (and of course a flamethrower on crocodile models) and the turret gun was upgraded to the excellent 6 pdr anti-tank gun then a 75mm duel purpose gun. The Churchill initially suffered from the same problem as other British tanks in that although the 2pdr and 6 pdr guns were superb anti-tank weapons for their eras they weren't dual purpose weapons with HE ammo. HE ammo was made for the 6 pdr but it wasn't considered to be particularly satisfactory. This seems a very odd situation for an infantry support tank. Some Churchill's were provided with 95mm howitzers to improve performance against softer targets and although the 75mm gun wasn't a brilliant anti-tank gun it was probably a much better gun for an infantry tank.
The book provides a good account of the service history of the tank, from the ill judged Dieppe raid, North Africa, Normandy, Italy and NW Europe. The book tells the story of the Black Prince development too but sadly not the special versions which are such a big part of the Churchill story. This is for reasons of space, I understand why the author restricted himself to telling the story of the gun tanks but it'd be nice to see a similar volume on the other variants produced to the same standard. The book is profusely illustrated (all b&w) including many superb drawings showing interior arrangements and construction details. The book is printed on nice glossy paper and has a nice feel. The text is very readable and well written and shows flashes of humour. Given the development process and initial reliability problems, not to mention the generally problematic nature of British tanks of that period the Churchill tank settled down to serve the army extremely well. Although slow its first class mobility and excellent armour made it very tough and it protected its crews very well indeed.
Overall a first class book, 5*, highly recommended.
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