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.

Contents:

• Mig 29 9-13 Part One (editor: build article)
• Marin [sic] B-26 B55 Marauder Part Two (editor: build article)
• Marin [sic] B-26 Marauder (editor: history of this classic WWII bomber)
• IPMS/USA Nationals (editor: captioned photo spread; no editorial content)
• AVIA B-534 Cover Article (editor: 1/32 resin kit from HpH Models)
• Su-15TM Flagon F (editor: Trumpeter kit build, 1/72 scale)
• Air Born (editor: new releases)
• Messerschmitt Bf.109 E4 (editor: build article)

This publication bills itself as “SHOWCASING THE VERY BEST IN SCALE AIRCRAFT MODELLING”. Believe it! Everything about this publication is Quality (note capital “Q”).

I love late war 109s so this book was right up my alley. This book is printed in MMP’s White series which is an A4 sized softbound book with 112 pages.

The book focuses on late war 109s starting with the Bf-109G-5/AS to the K-4. The book starts off with a discussion of the tail units used on 109s. I found the differences very interesting and easily understood. Then a small section on late war Erla Haube canopy is discussed. A discussion of the colors and a color chart is next and especially helpful is the callout for CMYK and RGB colors. The first thing I noticed was the great drawings and color profiles. Gunther’s Speck G-5/AS is particularly striking.

One benefit of the larger format book is that 1/48^th scale drawings are provided for each version. This will prove invaluable to the modeler.

This volume of the Osprey New Vanguard series highlights perhaps the most enduring class of fighting ships of the 20^th century. Considering that transformation in warships during the last 70 years, the longevity of the Iowa class battleships is noteworthy and a testament to their design and construction.

The book is basically divided in to two sections. The first deals with design and construction of the four units of the class (U.S.S Iowa, U.S.S. New Jersey, U.S.S Wisconsin and U.S.S. Missouri) with particular emphasis on how design parameters of previous battleships (of both U.S and foreign navies) as defined by the Washington Naval Treaty influenced the development of the Iowas. These considerations had a direct bearing on such things as armament, protection and speed. The author also goes into some detail describing the brains of these heavyweights – the fire control systems. The use of radar as well as aircraft for gunfire spotting is also detailed here.