Perhaps the best introduction for this book comes from the book’s online description,

“The Second World War Illustrated: 1944 follows the author's visual tour of the war by means of painstakingly researched and digitally restored pictures from the period of the key battlefields and events of the period from September 1943 to the late summer of 1944. This year marked a defining change in the balance of the war; by its end the Axis powers were in serious trouble on all their fronts.”

This is the fifth book in Jack Holroyd’s Second World War Illustrated series. The previous four books in the Second World War Illustrated series were previously competently and eloquently reviewed by three members of IPMS Review Corps:

Three Western Air Corridors to Berlin were established after the Yalta (February 1945) and Potsdam (July 1945) Conferences and formalized on 31 December 1945. The three corridors were 20 English miles wide, from Hamburg, Hannover and Frankfurt-am-Main to Berlin, terminating in Gatow, Tegel and Templehof Airfields, West Berlin. The final mission was flown on 29 September 1990, just a few days before formal German unification and the disappearance of the Air Corridors. The Berlin Air Route Traffic Control Centre was finally closed on 31 December 31, 1994. In between those dates is a fascinating, and very overlooked, history of over 10,000 clandestine reconnaissance flight operations against both the Soviets and East Germans in the heart of the Cold War.

The author, Kevin Wright, states, in the final chapter (Chapter 8 – An Outstanding Achievement),

Operation Chastise, the Dambusters Raid, hardly needs an introduction to anyone remotely interested in military aviation history. In this 80th anniversary year, there are several new books about the raid. This slim new volume from Guideline explores different aspects of the operation, its build-up, and aftermath in a general and abbreviated manner.

Author Des Brennan will be familiar to modeling magazine readers, and he approaches the subject with a number of short chapters outlining topics including:

• The development of the Lancaster
• Short biography of Barnes Wallis, developer of the ‘bouncing bomb’
• Bomber Command and Arthur Harris
• Preparations for the Raid
• The aftermath
• And others.

It’s an interesting, if short read. Brennan does a good job distilling the essentials into a cogent narrative.

Do modelers really need another book on weathering models? The authors defend their position in the opening paragraph of the book,

“This is a book about weathering and designed with one audience in mind – the military modeler. To be sure, there are many books concerned with weathering military models available, but they all concentrate on weathering techniques – pre-shading, washes, pin-washes, dry-brushing, hairspray, you name it, it has a name and technique. This book is different; it does not tell the modeler how to achieve a particular finish. Rather, it is a reference book showing a range of real military vehicles and their components in real military environments.”

Introduction

Sleek, futuristic and deadly – the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon was born from the crucible of the air war over Vietnam and the need for cheaper, simpler and more maneuverable fighter aircraft with which to combat the many thousands of Soviet-bloc supplied aircraft sold around the world. Back in the early 1970s the F-16 was the pinnacle of modern design, integrating a powerful turbofan engine and offering unrivaled maneuverability – thanks to its relaxed static stability and fly-by-wire system with computer control. Today’s F-16 Viper is light years away from the simple, lightweight point defense fighter first envisaged, but it has evolved and matured into the finest and most exported fourth-generation combat aircraft around the world. This is its story.

The book's cover has a stunning, head-on, in-flight photo of an F-16.