The Me-163 Komet is the only rocket-powered aircraft ever seeing combat. The whole combat history of this unique point-defense interceptor is covered by this book of the Aviation Elite Series as it only served with JG400.

The book is structured in five chapters, the first one covering the Me-163 development and the following four covering the operational service of 1.Staffel, 2.Staffel, I.Gruppe, and II.Gruppe respectively. It also has a series of appendixes covering unit organization, selected biographies, operational flight logs for each Me-163 and a very interesting appendix regarding the armament, including the use of SG 500 Jägerfaust, a recoilless mortar-style weapon which was fired vertically.

Philip Reed is an accomplished British master modeler of large-scale, museum-quality (or better) ship models. Although web searches and some book selling sites spell his first name with two Ls, his name is Philip with one L. Trained as an artist, and having a teaching career gives Philip the right background for this book. Philip started scratch-building WWI and WWII warships and switched to a long and successful career building sailing ship models. Philip Reed has at least three other books explaining how he builds wooden sailing ships. This book details his return to building WW2 steel warships from scratch – no kit used. Everything was made by hand from raw materials, with a sprinkling of generic photoetch brass. His latest book, Waterline Warships- An Illustrated Masterclass, is from Seaforth Publishing, a venerable British publishing house obviously devoted to nautical books.

This is the second book in the MMP Stratus “Military Collections of the World” series. It begins with a short, 9 page illustrated history of the Aberdeen Proving Ground and the Museum, and the rest of the book is dedicated to a photo documentation of the museum’s exhibits.

The first 9 pages show the Museum’s inside exhibits, uniforms, small arms, small artillery pieces and one or two smaller vehicles, and the rest of the book shows the portion of the collection stored outside. There are at least two views of each vehicle or field piece, and some commentary, in English, about the vehicle displayed.

Often the exhibit’s provenance is given, and some comments about its condition. I found the book engrossing as I had no idea that Aberdeen’s collection was so varied. The photos are of good quality, and will be of use to the modeler, though they do not provide the level of coverage which the super-detailers amongst us crave.