George Forty


George Forty was a British Army officer who was chief of staff of the Royal Armoured Corps gunnery school and later director of the Tank Museum, and also author of many books on warfare.

Education and military career

Forty was born in London and educated at Ashville College and at Queen's College, Oxford University.
He joined the British Army in 1945, and was part of the first post-war class commissioned from Sandhurst in 1948. He served in the British Army of the Rhine in the 1st Royal Tank Regiment, in Korea, where he was wounded in the Third Battle of the Hook in May 1953, and in Aden, the Persian Gulf and Borneo in command of an armoured reconnaissance squadron. After attending the Staff College in 1959, he held appointments at the Army Air Corps Centre and the Royal Armoured Corps Tactical, Signals and Gunnery Schools before retiring in 1971.

Writer and museum director

Forty published more than 70 books with a focus on armoured warfare and also on wartime in Dorset. From 1981 until his retirement in 1993 he served as the curator of the Tank Museum. He modernised and greatly expanded it, becoming known as the "father of the Tank Museum". Forty's wife, Anne, worked with him at the Tank Museum. They had four sons, one of whom works at the Royal Signals Museum.

Honours

Forty was elected a Fellow of the Museums Association and in 1994 was awarded an OBE.

Works