Luftwaffe in Detail:
Air War over the Czech Lands

History Profile No 1
Photo Manual for Modelers
Wings & Wheels Publications, 2000
ISBN 80-902677-8-5
84 pages

Reviewed by Chris Banyai-Riepl

Luftwaffe photo books seem to be a dime a dozen these days, but this one is rather unique in that it covers just those planes that took part in the air war over Czechoslovakia. While the title says "Luftwaffe in Detail", there is also some US and Soviet examples included inside.

So what exactly is between these pages? Well, there's a lot of photos I haven't seen before. The vast majority of these photos show planes that crash-landed or were abandoned at the end of the war, so there are many cases where the whole plane is just not there. All the photos are of decent quality, though, with many being very good and most have not been seen before. The captions are very well written and try to tell as much of a story surrounding the photo as possible. Very little is given in the way of color information, though, so you'll have to make your best guess on many of these. A pity, especially with some of the late-war Fw190F-8s shown in here, as the colors could be just about anything and the schemes are definitely striking.

Overall this book provides an interesting look at some of the typical Luftwaffe planes, and the large number of new photos makes this book a worthwhile investment.