Thanks to Casemate Publishing & IPMS/USA for the review copy!

Waldemar Tubus Goralski is a prolific author of illustrated warship books for Kagero Publishing. He also makes exhibitions of his illustrations in Poland where visitors can virtually walk on ships. The late Piotr Forkasiewicz designed the ocean and battle settings (this virtual tour is not in this book). Waldemar is lucky to turn his passion into a career, igniting passions of many modelers around the world.

History

The author of this book, James P. Gallagher, was Communications Officer with the 49^th Fighter Group, U.S. Army Air Forces, which operated in the Philippines towards the end of the war, and later relocated to mainland Japan with the occupation forces. Gallagher had been a prize winning photographer when he was in college, and managed to carry a camera with him throughout his military career. One problem was that he was aboard an Australian bomber flying in the Philippines when the plane went down, and he lost his camera. Fortunately, he was able to write home, and his brother located another camera and sent it to him, so he could continue his work. All of his work was done with a 120 camera.

Aviation Collectables Company is an Italian publishers specializing in Italian aviation titles. Titles include Il Thunderjet in Italia, G/80/G/82, Tornado IDS/ECR, SB2C-5 Helldiver, C-130J Super Hercules, T-33A/RT-33A Shooting Star, G.222, F-86K Sabre Jet, and AMX Ghibli. This volume, Cent'anni di Aviazione Navale, was produced for the Centenary Celebration of the Italian Navy in cooperation with the Command of the Air Forces of the Navy.

Unlike Aviation Collectables other monograph titles, this volume celebrates the 100^th Anniversary of Italian Naval Aviation. This is a square back soft cover that includes 128 gloss paper pages. The text is in two columns, one in Italian and one in English. All picture captions are also bi-lingual. I counted 165 color pictures and 23 black and white photographs. You will also find 169 color patches and insignia. There are also ten aviation color side profiles by Mauro Cini.

In this second installment of John Claringbould’s accounts of aerial combat between Japanese and Allied air forces, here he presents Japanese Naval Air Force operations in the Solomons and New Guinea from 1942 to 1944 (Vol. 1 covers Imperial Japanese Army Air Force engagements in New Guinea during the same period). The author takes a unique approach in presenting these accounts, providing insight for individual encounters through the eyes of each protagonist based on thorough research of each side’s official records, eyewitness testimony, personal narratives and diaries, and on some occasions evidence obtained from wreckage discovered years after the events depicted.

When I heard of this book, I really wanted to get it as so little is available on this post war period of British tank development. The title is a little misleading as it really refers to the fact that there is very little remaining documentation or prototypes remaining from this period. As the author points out much of the development during this period has been lost as documents and other records have been lost, destroyed or stowed away out of sight.

I have always been intrigued by the time in British tank development as so little can be found . This book opens up a lot of this hidden history for us to read and enjoy. This is a fascinating read and I learnt a lot of from it.