Introduction

The Dassault Super Étendard, which became the Super Étendard Modernisé in due course, had a remarkable career. It was a humble aircraft that was often faced with thankless and difficult tasks. There was no excessive power in this aircraft, but simply a remarkable versatility that made it the backbone of French carrier aviation for 40 years. Solid, reliable, well-designed, and adaptable, the Super Étendard was an aircraft that France regularly upgraded, enabling it to maintain its rank with increasingly sophisticated equipment and armaments. It gained notoriety for its role in anti-ship missions flown by Argentinian pilots, but paradoxically, France never used it in combat in this role. On the other hand, the aircraft was extensively used as a bomber in numerous wars, in a variety of places, including Lebanon, Syria, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan. With over 160 images, this book looks at the history of the Super Étendard and the impact it had on aviation.

Ian Baxter is a prolific author and has an impressive collection of photographs, many unpublished previously. The book follows the familiar Images of War format with brief introductions for each chapter followed by a lot of photographs to tell the story. At first, I was hesitant to review this book as a lot has been written about this period of well-documented evil that was the Nazi era. However, I wanted to read and see Ian Baxter’s perspective on Heinrich Himmler, the Architect of the Holocaust.

Ian Baxter did not disappoint, and his opening paragraph sums up the book,

My modeling experience detailing aircraft cockpits includes:

• Laboring over kit-supplied embossed instrument panels that need to be painted by hand and/or dry brushed;
• Giving in to using instrument decals, either the kit-supplied panels or individual gauge decals; or
• Using photo-etched panels backed by film pieces with gauge faces that need to be back painted white and sandwiched behind the metal fronts.

While the latter is the most realistic of the aforementioned methods, none provide the realism of the 3D printed panels that are now coming to market.

Being unfamiliar with these aftermarket products, I was anxious to get a close look at one. The one I was fortunate enough to evaluate is produced by Red Fox Studios, a company in Hungary, for the new Hasegawa 1/48-scale F-22 Raptor kit. (See Photo 1).

The panels are composed of acrylic plastic with both raised and recessed details and are printed in color.