Jon Diamond is an accomplished author with a number of published books to his credit. His previous works include “Stilwell and the Chindits”, War In the South Pacific, Invasion of Sicily, Invasion of the Italian Mainland, Anzio and Victory at Cassino, and now MacArthur’s Papua New Guinea Offensive 1942-1943. These and other books by Mr. Diamond are published by and available through Pen and Sword.

The Japanese strategy was to threaten northern Australia by capturing Port Moresby. In this publication Mr. Diamond lays out the strategy that MacArthur put forward to thwart this Japanese plan. The text that Mr. Diamond provides is comprehensive in its coverage of the theatre of operations, the impact of the geography in which the campaign took place, and a study of the commanders and combatants involved in the fighting.

Thank you to Phil and Bill for all that you do managing and providing review opportunities!

Recommended kit: Wingnut Wings

Reviewer’s Comments

I do not own any WW kits, and due to the high demand for the now defunct company, the prices have soared. A good friend was kind enough to loan me his Gotha G.1 kit for the purposes of comparing the SAC landing gear to the kit parts.

This landing gear set from SAC is a direct replacement for the kit parts. The white metal casting is superb as is usual for SAC, but a few parts did have a little bit of flash, which was very easy to remove. The kit consists of 12 parts. Three parts need to be removed from their pour rod (see photo).

OKB Grigorov has provided a very unusual kit in the form of a British post war Paper Tank. The Nuffield Assault Tank A.T.3. Which was one of 9 various of a design proposed by Nuffield. As a Paper tank it was only a design and never left the drawing board.

Included is:

• 142 resin parts
• one photoetch sheet
• one instruction sheet

The detail quality is great; The parts are very delicate and need careful removal from the resin bases. The instructions need a lot of experience to work with to get a great model.

Some of the parts were a little twisted but can be corrected if you’re careful.

The assembly is good but needs a little patience and time to get the running gear built correctly. Also, the resin tracks are very fragile, so this needs a lot of accuracy to get them fitting and looking right.

There were a few gaps that needed filling.

The book is another in the great Casemate Images of War series. This book covers images from the invasion of Sicily through the invasion and progress up Italy until the wars end.

The images in the book are excellent and inspire ideas for dioramas for modelers.

The book is full of amazing photos of the Italian campaign, it is very much an overview as the subject is very large. It does tend to focus on the US forces.

I recommend this book to everyone with an interest in WWII.

Thanks go to Casemate Publishing for providing this book to review and IPMS USA for allowing me to review it for them

This book is from the Italian Aviation Series and covers the T-33A/RT-33A mostly in Italian service. Like several other Italian aircraft book series this one too provides text and captions in both Italian and English.

Chapter one is an introduction to the design, where chapter two covers its design and beginnings with the USAF. Chapter three by far the book’s largest at 45 pages covers the Shooting Star’s (better known in the USA as T-bird) service to the Italian AF. The first T-33 was received in July of 1952 and the type served the IAF until March of 1982 a career of almost 30 years of uninterrupted service. Chapter four covers the use of Canadian built CT-133 in a hail preventing operation. Chapter five is a modeler’s note section with building the 1/72 Heller kit of this aircraft. The book concludes with technical data and acknowledgements.