Kagero Publishing, from Poland, is one of the major military history publishing houses. Since 1998, when Kagero started publishing in English, over 550 titles have been produced. Topics focus on specific planes, armor and ships, along with a bevy of focused topics, such as a class of warships or an armor type. Kagero caters to ship modelers by turning out books filled with line and 3D computer-generated illustrations, with incomparable accuracy to details. For warships, Kagero has two series: 1) Super 3D Drawings and 2) Top Drawings, focusing on a single ship per book. The topic of this book review is one of the Top Drawings series, which are designed for modelers to have a reference for detailed appearances of individual ships. Top Drawings consist of color covers with black & white (B&W) line drawings of the ship, particular features, and equipment, especially armament. But the main attraction are the foldouts in color and black and white, usually four sheets of scale drawings – the ship’s size determine the scale, but usually 1/200, 1/350 or smaller scales are shown.

One of Kagero Publishing’s latest installments of its Top Drawings series – 74 – is the Soviet anti-submarine cruiser Petropavlovsk, Project 1134B, active for 20 years, from 1976-1996. The book is a softbound European A2 size with both English and Polish languages. There is a short history, followed by 15 pages of B&W line drawings detailed enough for scratch-builders, accurizers and modifiers for building the Petropavlovsk in any scale. The book line drawings show the overall appearance and then focuses on armaments.

You also get 2 large, A4 size foldouts of the Petropavlovsk in her initial and final periods of service. Each of four Sheets has starboard full hull, port waterline and top views of the entire ship in 1/200 scale. Sheet B is in full color. Sheet D names the important features of the ship.

The choice of Petropavlovsk is unusual, with only the Kombrig kit in 1/700 scale available. Other scales would need to be scratch-built, for which Top Drawings are well-suited. Choosing to publish such a book is a bold step for any publisher, but my perspective is from the USA, and obviously there are more model builders in Eastern Europe that would be very interested in this Top Drawing.

Summary

Although this book is small it is intensely focused on modeler’s needs for building this ship in any scale. Two time periods (early and final appearances) are detailed. As usual, the B&W drawings and full-color drawings are clean, simple and appear accurate – one would need authentic blueprints to be this accurate. Drawings of the details, especially radars and weapons, would be useful for other post-1960 Soviet & Russian surface warships, making this book more than a one-ship must-have. Recommended highly for building any Cold War and later Soviet/Russian surface warship.

Figures

• Figure 1: Front cover of The Russian ASW Guided Missile Cruiser Petropavlovsk.
• Figure 2: Back cover of The Russian ASW Guided Missile Cruiser Petropavlovsk
• Figure 3: A detailed line drawing of amidships structures.

Thanks to Casemate Publishing & IPMSUSA for the review copy!