Although most World War I enthusiasts are familiar with the Gotha bombers, and for a time, the name Gotha was the generic term for any large biplane bomber with black crosses on its wings, little information has been published about the airplanes that Gotha designed to replace its standard long range bombers. Although too late for service in the Great War, these planes represented a step forward in bomber design, featuring better streamlining and higher performance using smaller airframes. Several prototypes were ordered, including the G.VII, GL.VII, G.VIII. and G.IX. There were many variations of the basic design, and some were envisioned as reconnaissance aircraft with specialized camera installations, and even as armored ground attack types. Only a few early models appear to have been used on operations, mainly on photographic missions, although no documentation survives. About 200 late model Gotha bombers were turned over to the Allied Armistice Commission after the war.

Thank you to Amberley Publishing and the hardworking duo of John Noack and Dave Morrisette for providing this book to enjoy and review!

Martin Bowman has earned an excellent reputation as an aviation historian. Combat Carriers continues this legacy with a wonderful series of chapters detailing important events related to carrier aviation since the start of World War II.

The table of contents is paraphrased below:

Once upon a time there was a guy named Rob Ferreira and he was a TreadHead. Unfortunately, unlike most TreadHeads, Rob just didn’t enjoy building a military vehicle and weathering it. Nope that was too easy. What Rob liked to do was take a military vehicle to it’s final resting place. Be it as a monument on display in the open, an old forgotten wreck sitting in some wooded area all but forgotten about, a vehicle destroyed by some catastrophe, or a vehicle sitting in a vehicle track park in Afghanistan.

This last scenario is what actually got the engine compartment started. Rob wanted to create more than one vehicle with this empty engine bay. He chummed up to his friend Steve Reid of Celticwerks and after much back door shenanigans and blacks ops dealings there was some magical agreement that got Rob to do the masters and Steve to create the molds for the rest of us lowly TreadHeads to benefit from this teaming.