Allied Arsenal · Field Reference · No. II
You've read Field Reference No. I
The Allied Arsenal
Reference Edition
Every figure in this book was read off a photograph of a printed page. Not from a search result, not from a text layer, not from another book that cited it.
The free book compiled its figures from standard references, and said so. Every figure in this one was read off a photograph of the printed page.
Thirty Allied weapons of the Second World War, with the documents they were read from. Armour, anti-tank, artillery and automatic weapons — thirty entries, each with a technical plate and a production-cost spine.
Straight to your download page after checkout, with an email carrying the link back to it. 14-day money-back guarantee.
The pages
Six pages out of the book, at full size
No description of a reference book is worth as much as a page of it. These are unretouched renders from the Reference edition — the same file that arrives after checkout. Tap any one to read it.
The method
What this book is
Three things, and the book states each of them in its own front matter before a reader reaches an entry. They are quoted below as they are printed.
The plates
Thirty plates, one for every entry, each reproduced from a named government manual and credited individually — the manual, the figure or leaf, the date, and the negative number where the source carries one.
They are not all wartime, and the book says which are not: wartime ordnance manuals where they exist, and postwar US intelligence guides where they do not, which is what the Soviet plates are.
Two plates print below the resolution the rest of the book holds to. The colophon names them, gives their measured figures — 220 and 229 dpi — and explains that the archive's master scan is smaller than the copy held, so it is a ceiling rather than a shortcut.
The figures
Every figure in this book was read off a photograph of a printed page. Not from a search result, not from a text layer, not from another book that cited it. Where that was not possible, the figure is not here — and the space it would have occupied says so.
The book's own comment on that rule, on the same page: “That sounds like a small commitment. It removed more numbers than it kept.”
Pages are read at 4× and re-read digit by digit. Where a source marked its own uncertainty — an em-dash, a question mark, a hedge like (approximate) — the mark survives into print, because dropping one would be editing a compiler's confidence out of his own table.
The costs
The cost spine is the reason this book exists. It is also, for one of its four sections, entirely empty, and the reader deserves that stated once, at the front, rather than discovered eight times.
Contract prices and man-hours are printed where a document carries them: Britain's official history for the guns, and CIA estimates of Soviet labour, both dated, both with their own caveats intact.
Where they do not exist, the entry says so. The United States Army wrote a multi-volume official history of building everything it built, and there is no unit cost in it. Four entries carry no cost figure at all, and each of those says why.
Read one first
One complete entry, unabridged
If the method convinces you, there are thirty more like it.
The Churchill infantry tank, as it is typeset in the book: the plate and its credit, the specification table, what it did, what it cost, and the section on the man-hours that do not exist and why. Five pages. No email address, no gate, no watermark.
PDF · 5 pages · 6 × 9 in · 301 KB · opens in any reader
The edition
What arrives
Three editions of the same book, because the same pagination does not serve a desk, a tablet and a printer equally. All three are included at every price, and all three are built from the same source in the same run.
A PDF is frozen the moment it is downloaded; a link that points at one file will eventually point at nothing. This address points at a page that gets updated instead — the book's own line, and the reason this page exists at all. Corrections are published at the foot of it.
Price
Two ways to own it
Both carry the same three editions and the same plate archive. The difference is one page at the back.
The Allied Arsenal
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- All three PDF editions — Reference, Reading and print-ready
- The plate archive at full resolution
- Every future revision, free
- Instant download after checkout, on a page that stays
Instant download after checkout.
An email carries the link back to it.
Numbered First Edition
One payment · rendered per order
This copy prepared for J. Smith
First Edition · No. NNNN
The edition page of copy No. NNNN, as it renders
- Everything in the $29 edition
- Your name and copy number, typeset on the edition page — First Edition · No. NNNN
- Set into the book itself and rendered per order, not stamped on afterwards
Rendered and delivered within 24 hours.
Leave the name blank and we will email you for it.
If you have the free book
What changes between the two
Twenty Rifles That Fought The War is a complete reference and stays one. Its comparative tables compile the standard references, and it says so on the page where it does it — that is an honest way to build a table, and it is how most reference books are built.
The spine of this book is different. Every figure in it is a primary-source read: someone opened a photograph of the printed leaf, read the number off it at 4×, and printed the file, the leaf and the date beside it. Where that could not be done, the figure is not in the book, and the space it would have occupied says so.
That is the whole difference, and it is a narrower claim than it sounds — it removed more numbers than it kept. The four rules that follow from it are printed in full on the How To Read The Figures pages, which sit before the first entry because they are the difference between a number and a number you can use.
Different subject, too: the free book is twenty service rifles. This one is thirty weapons across armour, anti-tank, artillery and automatic weapons, in five parts — four national sections and a comparative one.
Detail
Questions
What formats do I get?
Three PDFs. The Reference edition at 8.5 × 11 inches, 182 pages, with plates at 200 dpi. The Reading edition at 6 × 9 inches, 213 pages, single column and sized for a tablet. And a print-ready edition at 8.625 × 11.25 inches with bleed and 300 dpi plates, for anyone who wants it bound. All three come with every purchase. There is no EPUB or Kindle version: the tables and plates this book is largely made of do not survive reflowable formats.
How does delivery work?
Checkout hands you straight to your download page: the three PDF editions and the plate archive, all on one permanent address. Nothing to install, no account, no login. An email follows with the link back to that page — the books are far too large to attach, which is why the email carries a link rather than the files. Numbered copies are the exception: the three standard editions are on the page immediately, and the copies carrying your name and number are rendered per order and arrive by email within 24 hours. Two emails arrive in all — a receipt from Paddle, who take the payment, and the link from us. If neither has arrived within an hour, check spam and then write to [email protected].
What if I want a refund?
Email [email protected] within 14 days of purchase and you get your money back. Paddle is the merchant of record and processes the refund back to the card or account you paid with, so there is nobody to argue with. The files stay yours. Paddle's own buyer policy applies on top of this and you can raise a request with them directly at paddle.net. The full policy is on the refunds page.
Is the free book included?
No, and it does not need to be — Twenty Rifles That Fought The War is free to anyone who asks for it. It is a different book on a different subject: twenty service rifles, where this one is thirty weapons across armour, anti-tank, artillery and automatic weapons. Get it free here.
What will it read on?
Anything that opens a PDF: Windows, Mac, Linux, iPad, Android tablet, phone. The Reading edition at 6 × 9 inches is the one to put on a tablet — it is set in a single column with the margin evidence inlined, so nothing sits off the side of the screen. The Reference edition is the one for a desk or a large screen, and the one to print. On a phone, use the Reading edition.
How does the numbered edition work?
You give a name at checkout — or leave it blank and we will email you for it. The name and the next copy number are typeset into the edition page at the back of the book, which then reads This copy prepared for [your name] — First Edition · No. NNNN, and the book is rendered again from source with them in it. That is why it is not instant: allow up to 24 hours. All three editions are produced the same way. Copy numbers are issued in the order orders arrive. If you would rather send or change the name afterwards, the plate page takes it.
Do I pay again for updates?
No, permanently. When a revision is issued, everyone who owns the book is emailed a link to it at no charge, including the first buyer. Corrections are also published on this page, dated, at the foot — that is what the address printed inside the book is for.
Who takes the payment?
Paddle.com Market Ltd, acting as merchant of record. They handle the card details, the receipt and any sales tax or VAT due in your country; the charge on your statement will name Paddle. We never see or store your card details. See the terms and the privacy policy.
Not ready?
Start with the free book
Twenty Rifles That Fought The War — Field Reference No. I. Twenty service rifles from every major combatant, 72 pages plus a five-page sample chapter, laid out for reading rather than skimming. It is a complete book, not a teaser, and it costs nothing.
If the paid reference is worth your time after that, it will still be here.
For owners
Corrections & updates
The book's imprint page says corrections are published rather than quietly made. This is where they are published. Every entry below names what was wrong and what it now says.
The plate archive lives here too. Every drawing in the book at full resolution, with its source manual and leaf — the download link is in the email that carries the book, and buyers can always ask for it again at [email protected].
If a figure in the book disagrees with a document you hold, that is worth knowing, and it is worth an email. Every correction below came from opening a file again.
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1 August 2026 · First edition published
Reference, Reading and print-ready editions issued together. The corrections below were all made before publication, and are listed because the book promises the record rather than the outcome.
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Before publication · Plate provenance
The Soviet plates are postwar, and the book now says so. An earlier draft described every plate as coming from a wartime manual. Two sources are postwar US intelligence publications — the Special Forces Foreign Weapons Handbook of 1967 and FSTC-CS-07-35-66 — and those are where the Soviet plates come from. A third claim said the plates were drawn by the governments that issued the weapons, which is wrong even for the wartime half: TM 30-410 is a US handbook on the British Army. All three statements were rewritten and every credit line rechecked.
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Before publication · T-34 naming
Standardised to T-34/76 and T-34/85, in thirteen places. The sources do not agree with each other: FM 30-40 of November 1943 prints MEDIUM TANK, T34, with no suffix and no punctuation, and PAM 30-60-1 of October 1972 prints T-34(85). Both were read off the rendered leaf. With no source convention to follow, the book adopts the slash form throughout — it had been carrying three spellings of two tanks.
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Before publication · Specification tables
Eleven fields printed their second value under the wrong label. Where a specification field carried both a figure and the convention it was measured under, the pair was splitting across two rows and the second half landed in the next row's left column — so a value belonging to one field appeared beneath another. Eleven fields were rebuilt as single rows. The Reference edition is 182 pages as a result, two shorter than it was.
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Before publication · Canon de 75
A note had been folded into a citation line and ran the two together. It is now set as its own line beneath the table, which is the pattern used under twenty-eight other tables in the book.
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Before publication · The Reading edition's page numbers
The index and cross-references in the 6 × 9 edition carried the 8.5 × 11 edition's folios. The two editions paginate differently and diverge by about thirty pages, so every one of those numbers pointed at the wrong page. The contents, the index and every cross-reference are now generated separately for each edition, out of that edition's own typeset pages.
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Before publication · Twenty Rifles, six weights
Six rifle weights disagreed between the comparative table and the entry. All six were checked against the entries and corrected in the table: No. 4 Mk I (T) to 11.3 lb, No. 5 Mk I to 7.2 lb, M91/30 PU to 9.9 lb, SVT-40 to 8.6 lb, Type 24 to 8.8 lb. The PTRD-41 went the other way — its own 17.3 kg converts to 38.14 lb, so the entry was corrected to 38.1 and the rounded 38 dropped. A build-time check now compares the table against every entry and fails the build if they disagree.