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Review Author
Bill O'Malley
Published on
Company
Osprey Publishing
MSRP
$9.95

This is an excellent book that briefly summarizes many of the major campaigns of the Pacific War, and provides detailed descriptions of the significant sea and land battles. The book is 264 pages, plus 56 pages of black-and-white photographs, and eight pages of colored maps of several of the military operations. Each of the chapters are written by different authors and have previously been published as separate titles.

The Forward by Captain Dale Dye, USMC (retired) prefaces the book, describing the war in the Pacific as a dollar job on a dime budget. When the rest of the country was worrying about Europe and Hitler, the fighting men in the Pacific had a perverse pride fighting an obsessive enemy without the publicity that attended allied advances in Europe.

Book Author(s)
Charles Stafrace
Review Author
Steve Collins
Published on
Company
Guideline Publications
MSRP
$27.39

This softcover publication is 80 pages of useful information about the swept-wing F-84F and RF-84F jets from Republic Aircraft. It’s also Warpaint’s 100th book, so they’ve put a flashy block at the top of the front cover with a large 100 to let you know.

The F-84F and its stable mate the reconnaissance RF-84F were supposed to be Republic’s answer to the fact that the earlier F-84s could not compete evenly with the MiG-15s they met in the skies over Korea. Engine development and reliability issues meant the aircraft wasn’t fielded until after the end of the conflict. Even then, the aircraft was somewhat underpowered and required a very long takeoff roll, ensuring the nickname of ‘Hog.’ This also contributed to the aircraft being utilized more as a fighter/bomber than a pure fighter.

Review Author
Mike Howard
Published on
Company
Scale Aircraft Conversions
Scale
1/72
MSRP
$12.95

SAC produces replacement metal landing gear for many aircraft kits in many different scales. The replacement gear can be a big help in larger, heavier kits that may require lots of weight in the nose area to allow them to sit correctly or for gear that is inherently fragile in its design.

This set is for the newer mold Revell of Germany Panavia Tornado kits (GR.1/IDC/ECR), a great kit by itself, with excellent detail and engineering. The SAC gear, for this application, gives the builder a comparable level of excellent detail (see the side-by-side photo of the assembled and painted parts and try to decide which is kit and which is SAC) and one less step in the assembly process of the main gear legs. The one detractor I found in using the SAC main gear legs is that the attachment block/peg was not properly molded on either gear leg, so proper alignment and location would be left to the Mk. 1 eyeball of the builder.

Review Author
Chad Richmond
Published on
Company
Eduard
Scale
1/48
MSRP
$19.95

As with most injection molded kits, the Academy F-4B ejection seats have no lap belts or shoulder harnesses, and are also very basic. The shape of the cushions is also very questionable. Eduard comes to the rescue with their Brassin line of products and gives us some very detailed ejection seats. There are five pieces of resin and a very busy photo etch seat for each of the two seats provided. The seats without any belts or harnesses are impressive. When you add all of the belts, handles, levers and wires to the seats, they are really quite nice.

Book Author(s)
Wojtek Matusiak
Review Author
Pablo Bauleo
Published on
Company
Osprey Publishing
MSRP
$22.95

Osprey Publishing continues to expand the Aircraft of the Aces series with the installment of Polish Spitfire Aces.

This book is well researched and has plenty of black and white pictures, including several images of aircrafts and their pilots.

The book is divided in the following sections