Fans of the Imperial Japanese Navy have something new to put on their wish lists – a new, beautifully illustrated reference book! Kagero, based in Lublin, Poland, has published a new addition to their illustrated 3D series of historic warships. They have previously published 3D books on the Heavy Cruisers Takao and Aoba.

Using computerized graphics, the authors have created detailed 3-D illustrations of the Tone’s exterior from stem to stern from nearly every possible angle, in what appears to be her appearance after her last refit in the summer of 1944. It also comes with a bonus foldout that provides a profile of the ship rendered in black and white and some additional illustrations.

Kagero has published a series known as “Mini-Topcolors” oriented toward modelers. Each book includes color profiles and decals in several scales.

“Barbarossa 1941,” the 25th title in the series, concentrates on armor involved in the invasion of Russia. As such, most of the profiles are of German tanks, but there are a couple of T-34/76 and a KV-2. There are a total of 18 color profiles in the book.

A very neat detail is that, accompanying most of the profiles, there is a black and white picture which was used by the artist to create the profiles. Each profile also includes a small paragraph in English and Polish describing some details on the specific location or time that the reference picture was taken.

Over the past couple of years, aircraft diorama accessories have become more prolific in the scale modeling marketplace – much to the liking of many of us dioramically-challenged aircraft modeler types. Aires, one the leading aftermarket detail accessory manufacturers, is making its contribution to the proliferation in the form of its Wheelliant brand of accessories – namely in the form of aircraft chocks.

Wheelliant’s 1/48 scale NWC-4/5 chocks for US Navy aircraft come in a 2-pack of superbly-cast resin parts and a length of thread to represent the manila grab-line used to release the adjustment lock mechanism.

History

This is an unusual book in that it covers a relatively unknown but significant event in postwar aviation history. This was a series of air displays held at the Prague-Ruzyne Airport immediately following the end of World War II, during that precious time period when the Czechs enjoyed a brief era of freedom before the Communist regime takeover in 1948 drove them back to the Dark Ages where they would languish until democracy regained control when the Soviet Union disintegrated around 1990.

Osprey Publishing’s 90th book in the Osprey Combat Aircraft series is about the AV-8B Harrier II. It is the first in a 3-part set on USMC Harrier IIs in combat. This book is about the units of Operation Desert Storm and Desert Shield. The next 2 volumes will be Operations in Iraq and then Afghanistan.

This is a small book but it is jam-packed with color photographs. A couple of things that I really liked were the 8 pages of color plates of the various units that served in these 2 operations, and the firsthand accounts from the personnel. Particularly interesting to me was the section about VMA-311 from Yuma, Arizona. I’m very interested in the various units that have been based in my home state and I’m trying to build as many kits from them as I can.