As Anthony Tucker-Jones shows in this highly illustrated, wide-ranging history, for most of the Cold War the tank retained its pre-eminence on the battlefield. The Arab-Israeli wars witnessed some of the biggest tank battles of all time, and tanks played key roles in conflicts in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan as well as in the Iran-Iraq War and the wars fought between India and Pakistan. But then in the mid-1960s anti-tank weapons became ever deadlier and the Mechanised Infantry Fighting Vehicle (MIFV), which was designed to support infantry and fight tanks, emerged and the heyday of the tank was over.

Chapters cover each major phase in the evolution of the tank and of tank warfare during the period, from the battles fought in the late 1940s and 1950s with Second World War armoured vehicles like the T-34 and the Sherman, through to the designs common in the 1960s and 1970s like the T-55, Centurion, Challenger and M60 Patton, to the confrontation between the M1 Abrams and the T-72 during the Gulf War in 1991. Technical and design developments are important elements throughout the story, but so are dramatic changes in tactics and armaments which mean the tank has an increasingly uncertain role in modern warfare.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Tanks in Indo-China: The First Indo-China War, 1946–1954
• 2 Beg, Steal or Borrow: The First Arab-Israeli War, 1948
• 3 Dangerous War Surplus: The Korean War, 1950–1953
• 4 Jungle Cavalry: The Vietnam War, 1955–1968
• 5 Operation Kadesh: The Suez Crisis, 1956
• 6 Six Days to Victory: The Arab-Israeli War, 1967
• 7 Doc Lap Palace: The Vietnam War, 1968–1975
• 8 Confusing Enemies: The Indo-Pakistan War, 1971
• 9 Clash of the Titans: The Yom Kippur War, 1973
• 10 Armour in the Horn: The Ethiopian Civil War, 1974–1991
• 11 The Struggle for Mavinga: The Angolan Civil War, 1975–2002
• 12 Tanks vs Toyotas: The Chadian-Libyan War, 1978–1987
• 13 The Hard Way: The Soviet-Afghan War, 1979–1989
• 14 Middle Eastern Blitzkrieg: The Iran-Iraq War, 1980–1988
• 15 Beirut and Back: The Arab-Israeli War, 1982
• 16 Uncle Sam’s Final Showdown: The Gulf War, 1990–1991
• 17 A Messy Balkan Divorce: The Break-up of Yugoslavia, 1990–1991
• 18 No Strings Attached: Soviet Armoured Exports, 1948–1991
• 19 Goodbye Tank: End of Days
• Appendices
  • I. Cold War Armoured Units
  • II. Chinese Cold War Tracked Armour
  • III. Soviet Cold War Tracked Armour
  • IV. Soviet Cold War Wheeled Armour
  • V. Warsaw Pact Cold War Tracked Armour
  • VI. Non-Warsaw Pact Cold War Tracked Armour
  • VII. Soviet Cold War Anti-Tank Missiles
• Bibliography
• Plate section