The D7 Tractor: A Visual History of the D7 Tractor in US Army Service 1941– 1953 is part of Ampersand Publishing Company’s Visual History Series of single-subject reference books. Books in this series feature historical introductions followed by extensive period and walk-around photographs in black-and-white and color. The D7 Tractor, by renowned military author David Doyle, features two pages of introductory text, while the balance of its 120-page length is filled with photographs.

Model Art Magazine is a monthly magazine that covers aircraft, armor, ships, and car modeling. Model Art started releasing magazines in 1966 and has evolved from there over the past forty-six years.

In the June issue of Model Art it seems as if they have changed the layout of the magazine. Along with the special feature article there is a separate intro feature article, a special article, and the monthly features.

This issue starts out with an intro feature article. This article is a full detailed build of the Tamiya 1/32 McDonnell Douglas F-4J Phantom II "Black Bunny." This model is just gorgeous. Anything that could be detailed appears to have been. The article includes a multitude of color photos and line drawings of the various details.

The Ship

Heavily armed, shallow draft ships are known as monitors, named after the USS Monitor from the American Civil War. The USS Monitor carried two large guns in a rotating turret and had a flat hull with low freeboard. A later series of US ships that were designed for coast and harbor defense had a similar design and were generically called monitors. The term came to be applied to a ship that had main armament far beyond what would have been normal for a ship of its size and shallow draft to allow it to operate close inshore for bombardments. Monitors were used by the British during the First World War at Gallipoli and along the coast of occupied France and Belgium. A monitor was even used to shell the German light cruiser SMS Koenigsberg while she was laid up in the Rufiji River in Africa. No other ship type had a shallow enough draft or had heavy enough armament to deal with German cruiser.