During the 1920 and 1930’s most Latin American countries started developing air routes and air services; at the same time that their own armed forces started developing their air arms.That fledgling market brought intense competition from industrial countries, including Germany and Italy, which landed significant contracts for both military and civilian aircraft.

This book is organized into 16 chapters, basically one chapter per country, plus a handful of special chapters like “Visitors” (i.e aircraft not operated by Latin American countries but that made special visits to Latin America), Axis Airline Services, Survivors, etc. In this section is where the only Japanese aircraft in Latin America is found.

Most of the airframes in service were either German or Italian, with a strong presence of Focke-Wulf 44J, Junkers 52, plus a very large collection of Fiats, Capronis and Bredas. While the book covers both military and civilian service, there is limited coverage of combat actions as there were -somewhat- limited air combat activities during the 1930’s in Latin America.

By reading each chapter you can tell the authors went to painstaking efforts to document all the information reported in the book –in some cases even including contributions from other authors- and they strike a great balance making the reading plentiful of historical details and engaging at the same time.

Recommended to aviation enthusiast and modelers looking for known subjects, in unusual civilian or military markings.

I would like to thank Specialty Press and IPMS/USA for the review sample.