Introduction

Introduction

The following introduction is taken from the Tankograd website:

LEOPARD 2 in German Army Service

The Leopard 2 is a legend. Today, due to dramatic developments on NATO�s eastern flank, the tank is back in the forefront of military weapon systems for land forces. Although it has been in service for more than 43 years, the German Leopard 2 main battle tank and its associated family of vehicles remain the first choice of 20+ user nations today, underlining the vehicle's leading role among armoured formations worldwide, well ahead of other nations' designs.

With this book "Leopard 2 in German Service", the publisher and author would like to pay tribute to this chapter in German military vehicle history with the most up-to-date and most comprehensive monograph on this topic.

It contains all Leopard 2 main battle tank production batches and Leopard 2-based combat support vehicles of the German Bundeswehr.

Review

This offering from Tankograd is a hard-backed book, that offers 320 pages of high gloss paper telling the story of the Leopard 2 in the German army. The author of this book is Frank Lobitz. A short while ago Tankograd released a book telling the complete story of the Leopard tank, and this book proved so popular that it was sold out before it was printed and so in this release you get to read the first 320 pages of the book that sold out. The contents of this release are:

The way to the Leopard 2

Leopard 2 Development

Leopard 2 Technical Description

Leopard 2 A0-2A4 Series Production

Leopard 2 A5, 2A6 and 2A6M

Modification and further development Leopard 2 PSO/PSO-VT (2A7+)

Leopard 2 A7, 2A7V and modernisation Leopard 2A6

Newest Developments and future projects Leopard 2A7A1

Further Development in Germany (without German army involvement)

Leopard 3

Leopard 2 Specialised Vehicles

Leopard 2 in Active Service with the Bundeswehr

Leopard 2 Timeline

This offering is a dual language offering from Tankograd, with German on the left and English on the right of each page and this also extends to the captions accompanying the photographs. The Leopard family of tanks has been in service since the 1960s. The Leopard 2 came in to service in 1979 and now serves with a vast number of countries and will soon be in conflict in Ukraine. Over the course of its service life, the Leopard 2 has undergone many changes with the current service vehicle looking very different to its original release - and in this title you are taken through all those steps in an informative manner, that is rich in images and well written. The book take you chronologically through the early Leopard2 tanks to 2A5s then through to the current variant, and then goes on to incoming vehicles and or those that may never see service. 

In addition to the Leopard 2 MBT, you also get a tour of the specialised vehicles such as those used by the German engineers - with the story again being told in a mixture of text and imagery. The text is well worth reading, but you cannot but help to get hooked by the plethora of photographs. All of the imagery is accompanied by well written captions in both German and English that clearly explain what you are looking at. Of particular note, and especially well received by myself are fold out scale drawing in 1/35th scale that make this book so valuable taken as a whole for the modeller.

Conclusion

I suspect that as previously with the full Leopard 2 release that this title will also sell out quickly due to being limited to a print of only 999 copies. So if you want a copy of this book, you need to act fast or you will be limited to the second-hand market. Book quality is very high, with a very stable hard cover, high quality paper that shows off the images at their best and the pages stitched into the book which I usually take as a sign of quality. The cost of this title is listed as 69€ and while you may initially think that this is expensive, I feel that you are getting a lot of book for you money and you will be hard pushed to find a better deal.