Tony Buttler was born in 1956 and joined High Duty Alloys in Redditch in 1974 as a metallurgist. For nearly 20 years he was closely involved in the testing of aluminum and titanium airframe and engine components for many of the world’s most important airplanes. It was during this timeframe that his interest in military aircraft grew into a passion. Since 1995, Tony has been a freelance aviation historian, with this book being his 44th major release. This includes hard cover books on British Secret Projects, American Secret Projects, Secret Soviet Projects, and X-Planes of Europe. He has also written many titles for the Warpaint series of monographs as well as many articles for most of the popular historical aviation magazines.
The non-profit UK based group known as the Great War Aviation Society publishes their journal, Cross & Cockade International, four times a year. Issues are available in English as printed [Softbound, A4 (8.27” x 11.69), 80 pages plus centerfold] as well as digital copies (or both). A new magazine, Contact!, is now available in both print and digital download. The Society also provides a free newsletter (sign up on their website) and occasionally publish WWI themed books like the Sopwith Dolphin monograph I reviewed earlier for IPMS USA. This Journal is the sister of the US Journal, Over The Front. The Great War Aviation Society also hosts a lecture series available through Zoom. If interested, you will need to register early as the call is limited in attendance.
This is number 39 in the Polish Wings series and it covers the French-built Caudron-Renault CR.714. The book is 104 pages and contains 118 B&W photos, nine color photos, 51 color camouflage aircraft profile illustrations(some including top and bottom views), and six marking illustrations in color totaling 195 pictures and illustrations.
The book begins with a brief overview of the aircraft in Polish service. About 36 Cr.714s were assigned to GC1/145 Polish Squadron in France. This was the only Allied squadron to use the CR.714 in combat.
The bulk of the book covers the operational history of the CR.714 by the Poles throughout the Battle of France. This section is filled with many B&W photos, many not seen before. There are also many wonderful color profiles of the various 714s in service.
My first two impressions of ICM's 2025 catalog:
- The high-quality photographs and printing of the book.
- The huge number and diversity of model kits produced by ICM. ICM continues to produce their high quality, detailed kits, despite the turmoil that exists in their home country of Ukraine. ICM is one of my favorite scale model manufacturers and I have enjoyed building many of their kits.
The 2025 Catalog is 92 pages (51 pages PDF) of high-quality photos of ICM’s range of kits. The variety of kits produced by ICM is amazing. The photos and printing of the catalog is very high quality. The catalog cover is printed on matte paper, but the image has a gloss finish, like an applied decal. Nice!
The catalog is organized in the following sections:
A collection of photographs highlighting the Mercedes models used by Germany during World War II.
In the third volume of this publication, the cars of the Mercedes motor company's major production types are covered, such as the Mercedes 170, Mercedes 230–260 series, Mercedes 320 and Mercedes 540.
In this volume the author provides a detailed impression of these vehicles through original photographs, taken both during and before the war by the normal German soldiers who both used and served with these now classic automobiles.
The book opens with a forward, then an introduction, before going into the first vehicle with in-depth photo captions comprising most of the books’ text. Interestingly, there is no table of contents. If you’re looking for a specific staff car, you’ll need to thumb through the pages to find it. This is not a major issue for me, but some may find its omission cumbersome.
The vehicles covered in this book include:
I am an unabashed fan of the Images of War book series and enjoy author Jon Diamond’s writing style. Having read many of his books before, particularly his books on Burma Victory 1944-1945 and the Allied Victory Over Japan 1945, this book fills a huge void in the South Pacific War and its larger part in the Allied operations to defeat the Imperial Japanese Forces in the vast operational areas of the South and Southwest Pacific.
Beyond expectations!
Everybody loves a trainwreck, right? And yes, this book ends with trainwrecks, but in a very good way. We all know how it ends – with duty, honor, courage, defeats, little victories, explosions, derailments, disaster – after all, it does end in September 1939 with the German invasion outcome. But from 1921 to 1939, it chronicles the continued saga of national defense after the Poles kicked invading Russians out against all odds, using armored trains as mobile artillery and troop transports, until these trains became one of the first victims of blitzkrieg. This book is jam-packed with such detail, photos, illustrations, maps, and color plates (by the author) there is almost zero open white spaces and not much text. A quick read, and with all the visual content, you’ll spend hours being transported to what life was like on Polish war trains. A bonus – you’ll learn train lingo too.
The Single Series from Mushroom Model Publications focuses on a specific airframe, sometimes even down to a specific modification or variant of an airframe. This booklet includes line drawings of the Caudron CR.714 in both 1/72 and 1/48 scale and includes some drawings (probably from a technical manual) of the engine mount, and a very complete walkaround set of pictures in black and white of the real airplane (probably in a museum while being restored). There is a selection of period (WW2-era) photographs, and there are also a handful of computer-generated full-color graphics showing the cockpit as well as a 3-view color profile that is very attractive.
This landscaped, hardback book is the fourth in a new series of books by renowned and prolific photograph collector and author Jon Feenstra, published through PeKo Publishing of Hungary. This volume continues its proven formula of amazing photographs, many previously unpublished, of armored and soft skin vehicles in depots, in the field and post combat. Each page reveals more surprises than the previous. Previous editions of this great series have been reviewed:
The first volume in this series was reviewed here at WW2 Vehicles Through the Lens Vol.1.
The Battle for Berlin was the cumulative battle in the European theater in World War II. Three massive Russian Fronts aligned from north to south (Second Belorussian, First Belorussian and First Ukrainian Fronts) had battered two German Army Groups (Vistula and Center) and the three armies (Third and Fourth Panzer Army and Ninth Army) westward from October 1944 to mid-April 1945 to set the stage for the final onslaught and bloody Battle for Berlin.
Author Ian Baxter has once again provided a succinct, well researched and presented book on a complicated and seminal campaign.Using period photographs, illustrated pages, tables and immaculate references, this book provides the reader with the harrowing and horrifying last months and days of the Third Reich.
The Soviet Battle for Berlin, 1945 is composed of eleven chapters: