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GUNNER - An Illustrated History of World War II Aircraft Turrets and Gun Positions

By Michael Benolkin

By Donald Nijboer The Boston Mills Press ISBN 1-55046-332-2 160 pages

There I was, wandering the aisles of my local Barnes & Noble bookstore when a new title caught my eye. After recently building the Classic Airframes Fairey Battle and Lockheed Hudson kits, I found that there was precious little information to help color and detail a very visible portion of these kits - the gun turrets! Then I spot 'Gunner' and my future projects will go a bit easier.

Gunner is the companion hardbound volume to 'Cockpit', which provides a look into the 'offices' of many different combat aircraft. In the same vein, 'Gunner' examines the turrets and gun positions of many combat aircraft of interest, including:

• A-20 Havoc

• B-17 Flying Fortress

• B-24 Liberator

• B-25 Mitchell

• B-26 Marauder

• B-29 Superfortress

• PBY Catalina

• SBD Dauntless

• TBF Avenger

• Il-2 Shturmovik

• Avro Lancaster

• Boulton Paul Defiant

• Bristol Blenheim

• Fairey Battle

• Handley Page Halifax

• Vickers Wellington

• Bf110

• He111

• Ju88

• Me410

• SM.79 Sparviero

As you can see, there is a wide variety of subjects covered here and in many cases, the aircraft not covered here use some of the same turrets. Each subject is covered with a nice array of color photos from WW2 as well as from museum examples as well as B&W photos from the period. In addition, each subject covered has a brief description of the systems and an interview or two from the men who manned these positions in combat.

This title is a must-have for the aviation historian and the modeler alike!