Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #95251 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-15
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Review
Military Vehicles Magazine, April 2006



"Iron Hulls, Iron Hearts sheds considerable light on a much neglected facet of the history of armored warfare."

About the Author
Ian W. Walker is a Civil Servant in the Scottish Office, but his great passion is history. He is also the author of Mercia and the making of England and Harold: The Last Anglo-Saxon King, which was shortlisted for the History Today Book of the Year prize.

Customer Reviews

Italian armor in N. Africa -- Iron Hulls Iron Hearts
Disappointing -- the author dwells at some length on the courage of the Italian soldiers (which he establishes), but fails to address effectively the serious organizational shortcoming which put them in some totally untenable situations. Too many iterations of the same thing -- Italian tanks meet British tanks/artillery, and are destroyed. Would have benefited from a little more discussion of the Italian Army's organization, officer-enlisted relations, food/clothing/shelter issues (all of which compromise combat effectiveness).

Decent Read
Pretty Informative read, kind of dry at times in my opinion but has a lot of good info. Gives you a good rundown on the places, dates, and a quick summary of the battles that the armored divisions were a part of. Like I said a little dry but a good book to add to your collection for reference.

A Breath of Fresh Air
This book by Ian Walker is the best treatment of the subject in English I have ever seen. For those who read this book with an open mind, Walker succeeds admirably in what I believe was his aim, i.e., to put the performance of the Italian armored forces in North Africa in somewhat of a proper perspective. No, Walker does not cite specific examples of British and US negative bias towards Italian military performance (that in itself would be a work of monumental proportion), but any serious military buff or historian knows full well in how many ways, from outright falsehoods, to innuendo, the Italians have been marginalized. The facts, as Walker shows, are different. Somewhere, many years ago, I read an account by a British veteran who said something to the effect that "We made many jokes about the Italian artillery, but every time they fired at us, we took cover". Back to Walker's book. I was particularly impressed by his account of the battle of Bir el Gubi - I have written a couple of articles on the battle myself (one, in English, so many years ago that I can't even find a copy of it in my files, although I still have the original correspondence I got from half a dozen British participants in the battle), and one in Italian a few months ago. Walker's in-depth treatment eclipses mine by far. I was also impressed by Walker's reference to the Gruppo Cantaluppi on page 179 - I have never seen any reference to Cantaluppi in any other English-language publication. Cantaluppi was a very colorful commander who managed to squeeze more performance than could be reasonably expected from his exhausted troops on the retreat through Tunisia - but that's another story. My hat is off to Walker for the first serious, balanced treatment I have seen of the subject in English. This book is a must for anyone interested in the war in the desert, or in Italian military operations.