Product Description

The Gulf War bore witness to a number of deadly encounters between these two great adversaries. Heavily armoured, highly mobile and capable of killing at over 2500m the M1 Abrams is, to this day, a veritable fighting machine. Superior to both Iraq's Soviet era T-55 and T-62 tanks, nearly all sources claim that no Abrams tank has ever been destroyed by enemy fire. Despite entering service in 1980, the M1 Abrams remained untested in combat until the Gulf War in 1991, where it was to be confronted by its archenemy the Iraqi-assembled Soviet-designed T-72. Entering production in 1971, the T-72 arguably outstripped its contemporaries in a balance of mobility, protection and firepower. By the time of Operation Desert Storm, however, the tables had turned and the tank suffered due to low quality ammunition and poorly trained crews. In this fascinating study, Steven Zaloga pits these two great fighting machines against one another, plotting the development of the Cold War until both tanks met in combat in the deserts of Iraq and Kuwait.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #41823 in Books
• Published on: 2009-08-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 80 pages

Customer Reviews

Duel: M1 Abrams v T72
This is a very good title in the Duel series. The author deals well with the development of the two vehicles and the section on the T-72 deals well with the important differences between the export designs of T-72 (in terms of protection and ammunition) and Russian service variants. The combat history section was good but could have been improved by more accounts from Iraqi combatants. The comparison tables in the Duel series should, I think, be side by side and use the same units; the author does not always translate from Imperial to metric systems. Despite these niggles I think that this is a well written and presented book which gives the reader a good overview of the subject in a couple of hour's reading.

excellent
Zaloga last covered the Abrams in '92 and the T-72 in '93 in the Osprey Vanguard Series.

Hence there is a lot of new info in this updated work focused primarily on the duels in the Gulf War in this new series.

The advantage with the duel series is since it is 80 Pp compared to the Vanguard's 46 - lot more info can be crammed in .

Zaloga compares and contrasts the M1 and T-72 circa 1991 . There are Excellent chapters on design/development, Technical details , good profiles and cross-sections , training tactics , Order of Battle and Strategy and Analysis .

Lot of new info as well plus accounts from the men who fought. Some of this has come in Armor magazine but never in one place.

One of the better ones from Osprey and Zaloga - worth a copy- hopefully the Vanguard series will also be updated.