This second book in the new Combat Edge series from SAM Publications deals with the US Navy and Marine Corps EA-6B Prowler. The book has a beautiful cover shot in glossy relief of a Prowler coming right at you. The book covers the history and development of the Prowler, its operational history as well as a walk around and beautiful color profiles. Lastly, there are three unbelievable builds of the Prowler. More on these later.

The chapters included in the book are:

• EA-6B Origins
• The EA-6A- Electronic Intruders
• The EA-6B
• The Prowler at War
• Walk Around
• Color Profiles
• Prowler Galleries
• The EA-6B in Scale

Each chapter is lavishly illustrated and starts with the development or the EA-6A which was a modified Intruder which led to the specifically designed EA-6B. The story and pictures then progress to the EA-6B’s war record from Vietnam to Afghanistan. There is a great walk around that covers not only the plane but the jamming pods and weapons. A second walk around covers EA-6B BuNo 160437 of the VAQ-142 Grey Wolves which has a different color scheme with a dark grey mottle. A last walk around covers EA-6B BuNo 161120 from VAQ-133 Wizards in an Afghan Desert Scheme. This then moves to five pages of color profiles and a cutaway drawing. Lastly there is a gallery of wonderfully marked EA-6B’s on land and at sea.

Lastly, there are three fantastic builds of Kinetics 1/48th scale EA-6B Prowler.

• Hyun Soo Kim builds an EA-6B from VAQ-132 Scorpions as seen aboard the USS John Kennedy. The kit is fully open and Mr. Kim builds an entire aircraft carrier deck along with crew and tugs. Wow!
• James Ashton builds an EA-6B from VAQ-133 Wizards in a brown Afghan Color Scheme
• Florent Welter details an EA-6B from VAQ-136 based in Atsugi Japan. He added Wolfpack, Royale Resin, Steel Beach FOD’s and an Aires cockpit

To me, these are master works and you can spend quite a bit of time looking at the detail.

This is a wonderful book and the including of the three builds really aims this towards modelers. Highly recommended.

My thanks to SAM Publications for the opportunity to review this excellent book.