Thank you Bill & Phil for all you do for the Reviewers and for the opportunity to review this publication.

Pen & Sword has released another outstanding book belonging to the Images of War series. As with other Images of War publications, it is a photographic essay detailing the pathway of General Paulus’ 6th Army annihilation at Stalingrad.

The Read

The book begins with a prelude which provides important information about the movements of the three German Army groups in Russia during 1941, and how and why the command chain changed allowing Friedrich Paulus to be appointed command of the 6^th Army. Through four chapters, the reader is taken via photographs and text through the struggles of the 6^th Army in their quest to fulfill Hitler’s misguided dream of conquering Stalingrad and ultimately Russia.

This set provides a set of resin replacement main wheels for Special Hobby’s recent Me 209 kit. As expected from CMK, the wheels are very nicely cast with good detail including the bolts on the wheel hubs. The tread pattern on the tires is also very sharp and distinct.

The tires are easily separated from the pour stubs and the pour stub and any flash are easily removed and cleaned up as show in the attached photos.

I painted the wheels Tamiya NATO Black and the hubs Tamiya Black as I do other Luftwaffe aircraft wheels, but I will need to do some drybrushing to bring out the hub details as they sort of disappear under the black paint.

This is a nice set and presumably the wheels are drop on replacements for the kit wheels (I still need to pick up a Me 209 kit to use them on!).

Recommended.

When I heard of this book, I really wanted to get it as so little is available on this post war period of British tank development. The title is a little misleading as it really refers to the fact that there is very little remaining documentation or prototypes remaining from this period. As the author points out much of the development during this period has been lost as documents and other records have been lost, destroyed or stowed away out of sight.

I have always been intrigued by the time in British tank development as so little can be found . This book opens up a lot of this hidden history for us to read and enjoy. This is a fascinating read and I learnt a lot of from it.

In this second installment of John Claringbould’s accounts of aerial combat between Japanese and Allied air forces, here he presents Japanese Naval Air Force operations in the Solomons and New Guinea from 1942 to 1944 (Vol. 1 covers Imperial Japanese Army Air Force engagements in New Guinea during the same period). The author takes a unique approach in presenting these accounts, providing insight for individual encounters through the eyes of each protagonist based on thorough research of each side’s official records, eyewitness testimony, personal narratives and diaries, and on some occasions evidence obtained from wreckage discovered years after the events depicted.

Aviation Collectables Company is an Italian publishers specializing in Italian aviation titles. Titles include Il Thunderjet in Italia, G/80/G/82, Tornado IDS/ECR, SB2C-5 Helldiver, C-130J Super Hercules, T-33A/RT-33A Shooting Star, G.222, F-86K Sabre Jet, and AMX Ghibli. This volume, Cent'anni di Aviazione Navale, was produced for the Centenary Celebration of the Italian Navy in cooperation with the Command of the Air Forces of the Navy.

Unlike Aviation Collectables other monograph titles, this volume celebrates the 100^th Anniversary of Italian Naval Aviation. This is a square back soft cover that includes 128 gloss paper pages. The text is in two columns, one in Italian and one in English. All picture captions are also bi-lingual. I counted 165 color pictures and 23 black and white photographs. You will also find 169 color patches and insignia. There are also ten aviation color side profiles by Mauro Cini.