The book “September 1939 over Poland Part II” from Kagero publishing offers 20 pages of side, top, and bottom profiles of aircraft in 29 color profiles, as well as 6 decal sheets for 1/48 and 1/72 scale subjects in 200mm x 180mm format. It also provides a free poster displaying a Polish light bomber PZL.23B Karaś in action. The poster fits inside the book and shows the booklet’s cover image without any inscriptions. The quality of the poster and the color profiles is great. The decal sheets provide a lot of options for both German and Polish aircraft from 1939.

Safely packaged in a resealable sleeve is a beautiful 8.5 x 11 booklet and a small decal sheet. The booklet contains 25 pages of high-quality paper featuring clear photos. Most pages have two large photos which make details easy to see. A variety of variants are covered in this volume from the early E-1 to the E-3. This period of use for the Bf-109 was quite colorful with a variety of paint schemes. Kagero has shown most of the paint schemes. There are 16 pages of photos, four pages (not including the back cover) of wonderful color profiles. Six aircraft are included in the profile views. There are six pages of line drawings to show the differences and changes in the variants. The drawings are in 1/72^nd and 1/48^th scale.

Text is limited to the captions on the photos. That really isn’t the purpose of this book.

This book, covering the SBD Douglas Dauntless, is #13 (of 19 published to date) of a reference series devoted to famous WWII aircraft. It is published by Kagero Publishing (Poland). The book begins with excellent WWII era black and white cockpit pictures of the pilot's cockpit, though there are no pictures of the gunner's area. Next comes 4 pages of color paintings of a US Navy SBD-3 (USS Yorktown, Battle of Midway 1942), a USAAF A-24B, two late 1940's French navy SBD-5s, a US Navy SBD-5 (USS Lexington, 1945), a Mexican AF SBD-5 (1944), and finally a yellow wings US Marine SBD-1(1940).

I thought the Chinese Chengdu J-7 was a copy of the Soviet MiG-21 (even the NATO names are similar with Fishcan and Fishbed, respectively). This was but the first of many misconceptions put to rest by author Holger Müller. As stated in the Introduction,

The development of the Chinese MiG-21 derivatives is not only an interesting technological history in itself, but also reflects the changes in the politics of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on a smaller scale: from its alliance with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) to rapprochement with the West and the PRC’s own path of state capitalism.

BLUF - Bottom Line Up Front

This review covers both the ICM Do-217K-1 kit as well as the ICM paints released that includes all the major colors required to paint the kit in any of three markings included.

Overall, the kit itself builds up to a very nice replica of a D0-217K-1. The build is straightforward, and I built it out of the box. On the other hand, painting with ICM paints is different for me. I had difficulty getting the right mix for airbrush use. I eventually did, and painted the interior of the weapon bay that way. And, by the way, as ICM instructions call out, a base coat is required. And indeed I hand painted most of the cockpit. For use in an airbrush, ICM states to use 40% to 60% water or thinner. Well, that’s a pretty big range. I could never get the paint properly thinned for airbrush use, and ultimately broke out Tester’s RLM 78 for the underside and Tamiya Acrylics for the upper half.