Shortest Gap - The Story of the Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineer

Written by Michael E. (Ossie) Orsbourn

 

The history of the Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineer is covered from the first R.E. Tank of World War 1 to the Churchill AVRE – in all its variants. It is brought into the ‘modern era’ with Centurion and on through different Chieftain AVRE variants, closing with the current Trojan AEV.
The reason behind this book is to gain an insight into the AVRE and why they are still important today, carrying out the engineering work deemed necessary by the Army during conflict. 
The book is called Shortest Gap for the simple reason that Armoured Engineers always find the shortest gap to cross by whichever means they have to hand. This could mean either using Fascines, Bridges or ARKs within the Direct Fire Zone of which the AVRE was called for. Direct means that the vehicle was armoured and deemed to be used within a battle group with the same protection levels as gun tanks. 
This book gives an insight into the design and development of the vehicles themselves, their associated equipment, and the people behind them. The book does not cover actual historical actions in which the AVRE has fought as this has been covered in other books. Nor does it cover indirect engineer vehicles used by the Royal Engineers. 
Personal stories from crew members that crewed these machines provide an invaluable insight into their operation.
Scale line drawings of most of the Churchill variants and Centurion AVRE have been kindly contributed by the well-known AFV Club scale model company.