The Panavia Tornado is a family of twin-engine, variable-sweep wing multirole combat aircraft, jointly developed and manufactured by Italy, the United Kingdom, and West Germany.

There are three primary Tornado variants: the Tornado IDS fighter-bomber, the Tornado ECR (electronic combat/reconnaissance) and the Tornado ADV (air defense variant) interceptor aircraft. First flying in 1974, the aircraft was introduced into service in 1979–1980. Due to its multi-role design, it replaced several different fleets of aircraft in the adopting air forces of the three original partner nations. The Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF) became the only export operator of the Tornado following a somewhat controversial trade deal.

I have long been a fan of the Warpaint Series books from Guideline Publications and have several in my collection. They are excellent references for the aircraft they cover. Typically, they follow a standard format of history and development, service and deployment histories, and finally, technical information and detail photos. This particular volume, however, is slightly different from the others I’ve read since it is translated from Russian sources. Consequently, some of the sentence structure is stilted and you will have to take your time and read these passages carefully to absorb the content.

In the opening pages, the author discusses in detail why the designers chose the swept wing for the Mig-15 - speed. Then the narrative follows themes shown in the “sections” listed below.

This is a reprint of the original edition first published in 2010, and now is available in Veloce's Classic Reprint Series. The author's biography is available on the Veloce website above and is as follows:

UPDATED REVIEW

This release by SAC provides replacement white metal landing gear for the Kitty Hawk 1/48 Su-34 kit. While white metal is softer than cast brass, the main struts and nose struts are quite sturdy in this set and will hold up if a lot of weight is added to the model. This release by SAC is a replacement for the kit landing gear, both the main gear and the nose gear. These parts are not a copy of the kit parts it is engineered from build-ups of the kit parts and then cast. As a result, this set has fewer parts than if you built the landing gear out of the box. The gear is engineered to incorporate some plastic parts from the Kitty Hawk kit. Unlike past SAC sets I have reviewed in the past, these parts have been cleaned up and do not show any mold lines.

The Aircraft

The Douglas C-133 Cargomaster was the only turboprop powered strategic airlifter for the US Air Force. The 50 C-133s in service were built from 1956 to 1960. They were designed to carry large and heavy cargo and were superior to the preceding C-124 Globemaster in that they were faster, easier to load and could carry larger loads. One of the duties of the C-133 was delivery of strategic missiles, the Atlas, Titan, and Minuteman, being faster and safer than over the road. C-133s also delivered Atlas, Titan, and Saturn missiles to the launch pads for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs.

When the C-5 came out in 1971, the C-133s were quickly taken off inventory, as most of them had reached their service limits for hours flown.