I enjoy looking at and reading about early military steam ships that participated in conflicts prior to WWII, such as the Spanish-American War or even the US Civil War. So when I saw this book up for review, I knew I had to read it.

Piotr Olender’s book on the Sino-Japanese Naval War qualifies as an eclectic subject. I’m not sure there are any model kits that feature ships from this war, though there are kits of ships from this general era. That’s where this book really shines. It covers, in detail, nearly all of the ships from both sides that took part in this war. Additionally, if features period photographs and has some excellent line drawings.

Where the text of some books of this type can be very dry and hard to read, this one is just the opposite. It’s very engaging, and even though the author does supply plenty of dry info in the form of tables and lists, he also tells a good story with the rest of his text.

This book is the third in Osprey’s series on the Marine Corps’ Harriers in combat. It is of great interest to me, as I spent over 20 years involved in the Tactical Air Control System, as a radio repairman and comm. maintenance officer. The Marines bought the AV-8 knowing it would be used for CAS (Close Air Support), and very little else. But that’s what they want and need.

The Harrier IIs were involved in OEF from 2001 to 2013. There were only a few Harriers involved at any time, usually 8, either on an Amphibious Assault Ship (LHD) or ashore at Kandahar, Bagram or Camp Bastion. The STOVL (Short Takeoff Vertical Landing) ability of the Harrier IIs made it possible to operate off of runways that were in bad shape, often with crumbling paving and potholes.

The Revell 1/16 scale Hawaiian Charger Funny Car is a re-release of a kit first available in 1988. The kit is a representation of Roland Leong’s 1973 Dodge Charger “Hawaiian” Funny Car. These cars were essentially a rail or tube chassis with a modified fiberglass body representing the car – by this point in racing history a Funny Car had little in common with the stock car it represented other than a vague similarity and a name. In fact, the origin of the name ‘Funny Car’ comes from the elongated wheelbase and stretched bodywork – far from looking stock, they looked ‘funny’ and the name stuck.

This is a large, 1/16 scale kit, so it comes in an associated larger model box – this one measuring 11 ½ x 17 inches. It needs to be big, because the stretched Dodge Charger body is pretty long, just shy of 12 inches when completed.