Land Rover - Grossbritannien: Bücher - Geschichte, Typen und Technik (1/2)

After the Second World War many American military vehicles become surplus stock and soon found their way into the hands of farmers and land owners across Great Britain. The subsequent heavy use and the real possibility of difficulties obtaining spares led Maurice Wilks, the Rover Car Company Chief Engineer, to design and build a replacement. Not only would the new Land Rover fill a gap in Rover's portfolio, but also bring in much needed post-war money.

Intended as a stop gap, the Land Rover would cease production almost 68 years later, after a production run that had produced over two million vehicles. During that time it would transform how the military saw and used motor transport. From utilitarian General Service truck to cutting-edge weapon's platform the Land Rover would prove its worth time and again.

This latest LandCraft title looks at the design and development of the Land Rover as well as the military specific variants designed and built, including the famous SAS Pink Panther, the nimble Light Weight and powerful Forward Control gun tractor. The title will also look at those key conversions that took place on standard Land Rovers throughout the duration of its life span.

For the modeller there is nothing more important than the little things and this image-rich section of LandCraft's Land Rover title delivers the goods. Filled with crisp images, that chart the Land Rovers development, combined with detailed accompanying text, forms an enviable visual guide for the enthusiast and modeller alike.

The British military has always been one of the major customers for Land Rovers, buying thousands upon thousands over the years. Land Rover in turn has returned the compliment, developing special models to meet its needs, such as the Half-Ton or Lightweight and the 101 One-Tonne Forward Control.

Yet the British military Land Rover has always been special in its own way, particularly after 1961 when the basic specification was modified to incorporate elements that were never made available on contemporary civilian models.
It has been modified and adapted in dozens of ways for its military rôle, the basic GS soft-top utility and FFR 24-volt radio models being supplemented by a wide variety of specialist variants that remain little known even today.

This comprehensive book looks at the story of the leaf-sprung Land Rovers used by all three of Britain's armed services - the Army, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. It lists and describes the different types, setting them in their context both as products of the Rover (and later, Land Rover) companies and as military equipment designed to meet a particular need at a particular time.
There are copious illustrations, many never published before, and the lists of the vehicles themselves are as exhaustive as the authors have been able to make them in the light of surviving records.

"British Military Land Rovers" aims to cover every leaf-sprung type in use between the first deliveries in 1948 and the final ones in 1985 - by which time the core Land Rover product no longer depended on leaf springs but on a more modern coil-spring suspension design. It will be welcomed by military-vehicle and Land Rover enthusiasts alike as the most detailed book yet published about the subject.

In this authoritative and highly illustrated book, Pat Ware uses all his expert knowledge of the history of military vehicles to show the fascinating variety of machinery that has been used, from converted Jeeps and Land Rovers to a bizarre collection of even more remarkable, sometimes purpose-built strike vehicles - the Scorpion, Cobra and Supacat Jackal, the LRDG Chevrolet, the Mechem, the Pinzgauer and the Warrior among them.

As well as describing the anatomy of the typical special forces vehicle, with particular reference to the iconic SAS Jeeps and the Land Rover 'Pink Panther', he illustrates all of the known special forces vehicles, giving technical data, including information on power units and transmission, type of weapons, auxiliary equipment, armoured protection, speed and mobility, and weight.
He also explains the nature of special forces and describes their historic origins, with emphasis on units such as the LRDG, the SAS and Popski's Private army during the Second World War, and he looks at modern special forces and their role.