This lively study investigates the clashes between two cutting-edge tank types in battle at a crucial moment in Operation Market Garden.

In 1944–45 Britain’s A30 Challenger tank, a stopgap design armed with the lethally effective 17-pounder anti-tank gun used in the Sherman Firefly, provided essential armour-piercing firepower against Germany’s latest fighting vehicles including the formidable Panther tank. This absorbing account casts new light on these innovative tank designs and their clash in September 1944 at a critical moment in Operation Market Garden, the Allied bid to cross the Rhine and end the war by Christmas.

In this book, Ivo van der Spoel reconstructs the pivotal tank battle outside the Dutch village of Son on 20 September 1944, in which Cromwells and Challengers of the 15/19 Hussars repulsed an attack by Panther tanks of Panzerbrigade 107. In an intense combined-arms battle that lasted all day the Hussars, backed up by American paratroopers, destroyed five Panther tanks and drove back one of the most dangerous German attacks on the Market Garden corridor. The authoritative text is complemented by rare photographs, full-colour mapping and specially commissioned artwork showing the two types in combat.