The 50th Anniversary Volume provides the clearest view yet of the 11th. This volume includes a history of each individual unit of the Thunderbolts, all-new photos and biographies, plus unit insignias.

The armored divisions were the shock force of the US Army's combat formations during the fighting in Northwest Europe in the final year of the war. Of the 16 such divisions formed during the war, all but one served in the European Theater of Operations. This book examines the organizational structure, operational doctrine and combat mission of these divisions from D-Day onwards, describing how doctrines and tactics were changed as the divisions were forced to adapt to the battlefield realities of combat against an experienced foe. The lessons drawn by the armored divisions from the bitter fighting in Northwest Europe from 1944 to 1945 strongly shaped postwar US Army doctrine.

• Hundreds of photos, including many never published before with riveting accounts of armored warfare in World War II • Compares the Sherman to other tanks, including the Panther and Tiger • Author is a world-renowned expert on the Sherman tank and American armor Some tank crews referred to the American M4 Sherman tank as a "death trap." Others, like Gen. George Patton, believed that the Sherman helped win World War II. So which was it: death trap or war winner? Armor expert Steven Zaloga answers that question by recounting the Sherman's combat history. Focusing on Northwest Europe (but also including a chapter on the Pacific), Zaloga follows the Sherman into action on D-Day, among the Normandy hedgerows, during Patton's race across France, in the great tank battle at Arracourt in September 1944, at the Battle of the Bulge, across the Rhine, and in the Ruhr pocket in 1945.

Includes the lineages and honors for all armies, corps, divisions, and separate combined arms brigades in order to perpetuate and publicize their traditions, honors, and heraldic entitlements, organized under Tables of Organization and Equipment that have been active in the Regular Army, Army Reserve, and Army of the United States since the beginning of World War II. Included in this edition is the 12th Infantry Division (formerly the Philippine Division), which did not appear in the earlier one. The lineages are current though 1 October 1997. Brigade headquarters and headquarters companies or headquarters, except for aviation and engineer brigades, organic to the above-mentioned combat divisions since ROAD (Reorganization Objective Army Divisions) in the early 1960s have also been incorporated. (Divisional aviation and engineer brigades are branch specific and therefore have been omitted.) The lineages and honors for Army National Guard divisions and separate combined arms brigades that were active on 1 October 1997 are also included.--Preface.

In December 1944, just as World War II appeared to be winding down, Hitler shocked the world with a powerful German counteroffensive that cracked the center of the American front. The attack came through the Ardennes, the hilly and forested area in eastern Belgium and Luxembourg that the Allies had considered a “quiet” sector. Instead, for the second time in the war, the Germans used it as a stealthy avenue of approach for their panzers. Much of U.S. First Army was overrun, and thousands of prisoners were taken as the Germans forged a 50-mile “bulge” into the Allied front. But in one small town, Bastogne, American paratroopers, together with remnants of tank units, offered dogged resistance. Meanwhile the rest of Eisenhower’s “broad front” strategy came to a halt as Patton, from the south, and Hodges, from the north, converged on the enemy incursion. Yet it would take an epic, six-week-long winter battle, the bloodiest in the history of the U.S. Army, before the Germans were finally pushed back. Christer Bergström has interviewed veterans, gone through huge amounts of archive material, and performed on-the-spot research in the area. The result is a large amount of previously unpublished material and new findings, including reevaluations of tank and personnel casualties and the most accurate picture yet of what really transpired. The Ardennes Offensive has often been described from the American point of view; however, this balanced book devotes equal attention to the perspectives of both sides. With nearly 400 photos, numerous maps, and 32 superb color profiles of combat vehicles and aircraft, it provides perhaps the most comprehensive look at the battle yet published.

A chronicle of one soldier’s life as a US army tank driver in Europe during World War II. Tank Driver is the story of a young man’s combat initiation in World War II. Based on letters home, the sparse narrative has the immediacy of on-the-spot reporting. Ted Hartman was a teenager when he was sent overseas to drive a Sherman tank into combat to face the desperate German counterattack known as the Battle of the Bulge. Hartman gives a riveting account of the shifting tides of battle and the final Allied breakout. He tells about the concentration camps, the spectacle of the defeated Germans, and the dramatic encounter with Russian soldiers in Austria that marked combat’s end. This is a vivid, personal account of some of the most dramatic fighting of World War II. “[A] well-balanced, often moving look at one man’s war and every man’s war.” —World War II