Product Description

The Universal Carrier was a fast, lightly armed vehicle developed by the British Army to carry infantry across ground defended by small-arms fire, specifically the Bren light machine gun, hence the name ‘Bren Gun Carrier’. This name would stick with the Universal Carrier and all of its future variants. This book details the Carrier, which was employed in a number of roles including carrying ammunition and towing anti-aircraft guns and trailers. All Allies used the Universal Carrier extensively during practically every World War II campaign. By the war’s end, the Universal Carrier had proved itself to be an invaluable and successful cross-country vehicle that was both agile and fast for its time.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #589325 in Books
• Brand: Osprey Publishing
• Published on: 2005-06-12
• Released on: 2005-06-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 48 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781841768137
• Condition: USED - GOOD
• Notes:

Review
‘one of the best New Vanguard books ever printed - VERY highly recommended.’ --

Review
"For Allied/Commonwealth modellers the Universal Carrier has always been a popular subject. Bearing in mind the paucity of good reference books and only one 1/35th kit of the subject, this new book from Osprey Publishing comes into the 'sight for sore eyes category' - a truly welcome addition...." -Jim Rae, Armorama (May 2005)

From the Publisher
The unrivalled illustrated reference on fighting vehicles, transport and artillery through the ages. Each volume is illustrated throughout, making these books uniquely accessible to history enthusiasts of all ages.

Customer Reviews

The Complete Story
The second sentence in this book pretty well sums up the entire story of the Bren Gun Carrier: 'Designed for a role that it never really fulfilled, it was adapted to dozens of others for which it was never entirely suited and was still in service, in vast numbers, long after it should have been pensioned off.'

In effect it was something like a tracked version of the Jeep. It was armored (sort of, about 1/3 of an inch), and because of the tracks had very good cross country mobility. It was reasonably reliable (in later versions) and cheap. It was made in several factories in the UK as well as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA.

This book is another of Osprey's specialist books describing a single line of vehicles in great detail from its history to cut away drawings, dozens of variations, a magnificant set of photographs. It is probably the last word on Bren Gun Carriers (a name by which they are universally known, that was totally incorrect).

A good work on an almost useless weapon!
This is about what one would expect from an Osprey title: well researched and written, excellent color plates and photos.

The Universal Carrier ("Bren Gun Carrier") is amazing in that a sophisticated, well-funded military would actually buy and field such a useless weapon - and in quantity! Truly, here is a weapon that was useless in its intended role. It was too poorly protected to support infantry with direct fire and too small to carry any useful load.

The Universal Carrier is an excellent example of poorly thought-out weapons development.

Bren Gun Carrier
David Fletcher is an expert on British Armor and curator of the Bovington Tank Museum. The British wry sense of humor is plain in all of his books, which is rare and welcome in military books. I enjoyed this book as Fletcher sharply criticized this tracked vehicle.

This is a very concise short history of the Universal Carrier, filled with B&W photos, great captions and color diagrams. The "Bren Gun" Carrrier was popular because it beat walking or carrying a machine gun. Like the US Army jeeps, it could go almost anywhere, was often overloaded with gear and weapons and simple to maintain & operate. It had limited armor protection and could not carry a lot of firepower, but it was not designed to do so.

What did I not like? The author sometimes spent a lot of time discussing experimental types which were odd, amusing, but given such a limited space, would have been better spent on the main versions.

Still, I recommend this book to armor fans, a good addition to show the British use and development of tracked warfare in WW2.