The idea of comparing combatants and combat actions from various historical conflicts is intriguing, whether real or imagined. This new Osprey publication provides a refreshing historical account of British cruiser encounters with German commerce raiders. A single Hilfskreuzer could sortie for a long time, disguised as a merchant ship, sinking commercial shipping. When caught by a British warship, the Hilfskreuzer often effectively exploited the element of surprise, in some case sinking a warship of superior size and firepower. Countering this threat was a challenge to the British Navy, who did eventually prevail over the raiders.

The book content is nicely organized with the following chapters:

Most of you have heard of PT Boats, E-Boats, and MTBs. There have been movies, books, and some good models of these boats. But a class that doesn’t get that much attention is the British Motor Gun Boats or MGBs. This 48 page soft-cover book starts with the development of these craft. The Motor Torpedo Boats did not have the firepower to take on their German cousins, so the initial thought was to remove the torpedo tubes and add heavier weapons. Later, boats made specifically as MGBs were created and finally, some of these were rearmed with torpedos by the end of the war, making a full circle.

This most recent release in the Osprey "Master Class" series (designed to give the modeler the “biggest bang for the buck”) is printed with a hard cover and a spiral binder holding 192 pages loaded with easy to follow text and color shots of “how to” sequences. It also gives us beautifully completed models by Brett Green, world renowned master modeler, as well as highly talented folks such as Roy Sutherland, Mick Evans and others. It is designed to be a “workbench” book that will stay open (thanks to the spiral binding) when put down. Although this book is described as a “guide for the serious modeler”, it goes well beyond that, and should appeal to the “curious” among you that wonder (as I have so many times) “now how the hell did he do that !?” If you fall into that category, you will find this reference publication a must include for your personal library.

PLAMO MANUAL, No. 801 is the latest in a series of modeling manuals from ModelArt. Previous manuals have addressed, among other topics, planes, cars, ships and airbrushing. The subject of this review is a manual on modeling armor.

The manual comes in a convenient size, 7-1/4” X 10”. It consists of 112 picture- packed pages and is bound in a high gloss paper backing. The pages are also of high gloss paper. The photographs are excellent quality, bright, crisp, and each is very focused on its topic. Thepictures in the articles speak for themselves.

The down side of this publication for me is that 99.5% of it is in Japanese. However, because the manual is so well organized, and the material is presented in such a logical manner it is easy to follow.

Description

This is my second review of Sci-fi & fantasy modeller and I am a bit disappointed. I like to challenge myself to present a balanced review of the Good, Bad and Ugly and at the same time keep it very objective. However, as in my first review, I can not find any Bad or Ugly to report on. Once again, the fine editorial staff and writers have produced a magazine filled with a variety of high quality articles produced on high quality materials and definitely worth the purchase price.

The publication consists of 100 pages, about 7 X 10 inches on heavy stock semi-glossy paper. The isssue is very article dense with only a few advertisements with over 98% of the page space being given over to relevant content.