What’s Inside

This is my first exposure to this series of photo reference guides and I kind of like the format. There is a brief one page Introduction and explanation of the format- and a reasoning of why this particular volume- which ties in to Tamiya’s recent release of the P-38 F/G. From there we get right to the meat of the guide- the many photos.

Mr. Marmo gives a brief explanation of how to navigate the photo thumbnails and then you’re set free. When you click on a thumbnail, you are brought to a whole page version of it, complete with a caption explaining what you’re seeing and a credit reference for where the photo originated from.

Things begin, as do most aircraft kits, with the cockpit. The photos represent all of the listed variants and give you a close up of the details. I only wish there were some color photos, or at least references to paint directives as that would be useful information as you go to detail these areas. In many cases, some of the photo information is surmised based on the limited information available about the photo, but the author appears to be quite knowledgeable about the subject material so it doesn’t get in the way of the usefulness of the photos.

I’ve included a series of them here, and can say that as valuable as these might be when you are trying to detail your P-38 model, many of the photos serve an even greater purpose in giving you some great ideas of how to display your model in a diorama if you so choose. There are plenty of fascinating settings included that have me thinking of how to possible display my kit when I get to building it.

Conclusion

This is a neat new format for a model reference book. I usually am one to go for a paper copy that I can pick up at my leisure, but this format is certainly very intuitive and useful, and it sure doesn’t take up much bookshelf space. There are a select number of other guides available, and if you have ideas of other similar guides you might like to see, the author is open to suggestions. As this volume stands though, it’s a useful addition to your reference material for whatever P-38 kit you might have in your stash and I highly recommend it. My thanks to Scale Publications and IPMS-USA for the sample PDF copy.