I’ll be honest. I’ve never heard of HMH Publications or Duke Hawkings before I had the opportunity of reviewing the first book of this series (Sepecat Jaguar). But I am very glad to have been introduced to them. These books exude quality.

The quality goes both on the content that is covered (i.e. level of detail) and the printing. The paper quality is super, with a satin finish. All pictures are in color, with proper exposure and very sharp focus, so all details are crisp.

The pictorial book is split in the following sections: Action, Cockpit, Fuselage, Weapons, Maintenance. As you can imagine, the pictures have very descriptive and relevant captions, helping you understand what detail is being highlighted in each image. Not only are you getting all the walk-around images you need for your build, you are also learning details of the aircraft as you read along.

The maintenance section is especially useful if you are thinking of having any open panels in your model, as the images are very sharp for either color detail painting or even scratch building a piece or two. As Duke himself is a modeler, he knows and understands exactly the type of picture and detail we are going after.

A while ago I was building the ESCI Mirage F.1 and wanted to spruce it up a bit. I did some mods and scratched some parts but didn’t have good references. I wish I would have had this book back then. The model would have been so much more accurate!

A nice touch is that the author describes how the book series came about: He is a modeler himself and was collecting reference material for his own personal, private book on the Jaguar when a friend talked him into publishing the book and set up a whole series. What a service this friend has done to the modelling community!

Highly recommended.

I would like to thank HMH Publications, Casemate Publications, and IPMS/USA for the review sample.