[.ca] Steel Victory: The Heroic Story of America's Independent ... (ISBN 0891417826)

Victory with Steel Armor in World War Two:
The work is long overdue. Little information was known of the role of the independent tank battalions of world war two until this book was produced. The author has done an exceptional job of reseraching and writing the history of the Independent Armored Forces of the U.S. Army of World War Two. These independent tank battaion were created for the sole mission of support for Infantry. The author exposes how these battalions did their jobs- with great skill , leadership and in anonymity. The author makes the clear distinction between the armored divisions of Gen. Patton fame and the dirt grinding hard slugging tank battalions attached to the infantry and moving at the pace of infantry. This is a good buy for everyone interested in the military forces of world war two and should be an important reference for the subject material.

Historical research of the highest order:
Amazingly, no previous work has been written on this topic and Mr. Yeide's work admirably fills this lacuna. This book is an exhaustively researched contribution to military history, yet readable for the non-specialist like myself. Interspersed with historical facts are anecdotes and personal recollections, which add the personal and human dimensions so often lacking in historical accounts. The historic photographs were particularly welcome, and the maps in the beginning helped clarify sometimes confusing battle movements. The appendices are detailed and will be very useful as a reference. For anyone interested in this sorely neglected aspect of World War II military history, this intelligent, lucid and extensively researched work is a must-read.

An okay read.:
I was really looking forward to this book and I finally got it and read it and wasn't too impressed by it. In a nutshell, the book is dull. It seems as if the author just focuses on a few of the independent tank battalions that served in WWII and ignores the rest. The biggest disappointment in this book is there are no maps in it. It is hard trying to follow the flow of the action and not have a clue where some of these locations were that the author was talking about. About the only good thing about this book is the author lists the history of each of the independent tank battalions at the end of the book. If you have some extra cash laying around then buy this book. If you are on a strict budget, get it at the library.

A close-up of the Sherman tankers:
Although many books have been written on tank warfare in various theaters-both from a strategic, tactical, and theoretical point of view, Yeide's Steel Victory gives us an excellent first-hand impression of what it was like to be Sherman tanker during World War II. It is not all guts and glory. Hampered by the American tank theoretician's idea of what a tank should be able to do and not do, Yeide succeeds in capturing the bitter lessons learned by those units in which it was employed to support infantry, and describing the frustration of those who drove and fired Shermans with orders from the generals who seemed to know little about how to employ them properly. It is probably a testament to the tanker's ingenuity that not only did they learn to offset the Sherman's poor design, but also developed tactics at the smallest unit level (often the platoon) to defeat German defense in the Bocage country, and the much more dangerous Panther and Tiger tanks that appeared in increasing numbers after D-Day, by improving infantry-armor coordination. Steel victory should prove a solid read to both military buffs and novitiate alike.

A Subject Not Previously Covered:
Steel Victory covers a subject not covered by previous WWII books; that of the independent tank battalions in Europe in WWII. The armored divisions got all the headlines with their occasional fast advances; but the separate tank battalion did the hard day-to-day job of helping the Infantry divisions painfully gain ground. I speak from experience as tank platoon leader with the 750th Tank Battalion which supported the 104th Timberwolf Division through much of the fighting, as well as the 75th ID and the 99th ID in the Battle of the Bulge. Very little has been written about the job done by the separate battalions, other than an occasional mention in the histories of the divisions they served. Mr. Yeide has done a phenomenal job of digging out the records of each of these battalions. His book will be the recognized source of information on this subject for years to come.