Death by Design: British Tank Development in the Second World War

By Peter Beale

At the outbreak of war in 1939 British tank crews were ill-equipped, under trained and badly led. As a consequence the lives of hundreds of crewmen were wasted unnecessarily. This was due not only to the poor design and construction of British tanks, but also to the lack of thought and planning on the part of successive pre-war governments and the War Office. Death by Design explores how and why Britain went from leading the world in tank design at the end of the First World War to lagging far behind the design quality of Russian and German tanks in the Second World War. This book is a much-needed warning to governments and military planners: a nation must always be prepared to defend itself and ensure that its soldiers are equipped with the tools to do so.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Jul 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9780750979344

Peter Beale

Peter Beale served as a troop leader in the 9th Royal Tank Regiment in Normandy and the north-west Europe campaign in 1944-45, during which he was wounded twice. After demobilisation he obtained a degree in electrical engineering at University College, London. He emigrated to Australia in 1956, where he worked as a management consultant. Peter Beale has written three books on tanks in World War II: Tank Tracks, Death by Design, and The Great Mistake. His wife Shirley has assisted with the research for all of these titles as well as this latest release. Peter and his wife, Shirley, live in Valentine, NSW.

Reviews for Death by Design

[charlesferdinand_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

British tank design in WW II was less than impressive, to say the least. This book examines what went wrong and why no truly effective British tank was fielded before 1945. There is a lot of good stuff in the book, but it is overly fragmented. For instance, there are chapters on gun development, development of the various tank categories (light, cruiser, infantry), reactions from the troops... each telling same story over again, but from different angles. Only in the last thirty pages or so, the various strands come together, and there is some analysis of what went wrong.

[sr_moreno · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I had a lot of questions that on the subject of British tank development, but this book is of limited help in answering them. The book lacks references, which doesn't help and generally does not appear to well researched. A lot of tired myths about tank design seem to be trotted out unquestioningly. The fictionalised sections that open some chapters are frankly bizarre, and don't help at all. It's not all bad, some of the sections on the paths of tank design are quite interesting, but this is far from the definitive work that I was looking for.