D-Day to VE Day: The Air Battle Over Europe
By Matt Bittner
Author: Richard A. Franks
Publisher: Valiant Wings Publishing
ISBN #: 978-0993090813
Binding: Softcover
Pages: 90
Valiant Wings Publishing keeps coming up with titles that both modelers and historians alike appreciate. In their Airframe Extra series, though, I feel it's geared more toward modelers, which is not a bad thing. Up front is an overall view of the period in question followed by full-build reviews of models. Interspersed amongst the pages are a number of color plates of the aircraft during that period. The book is broken out thusly:
History
RAF Profiles
C-47A 1/72 Build
Spitfire PR Mk XIX 1/72 Build
USAAF Profiles
Bf 109 1/48 Build
P-38 1/48 Build
Me 262 1/48 Build
Axis Profiles
P-47D 1/32 Build
Spitfire PR XIX 1/32 Build
USSR Profiles
While the History section gives a day-to-day occurence outline, it's not meant to be a thorough history of the time-frame. Instead it just highlights some of the more important occurences. For example, on 21st October 1944: "Allied: The first German city to fall to the Allies, Aachen, is captured by American troops." Plus on 25th October 1944: "Allied: Kirkenes is liberated by the Soviet Army, the first town in Norway to be so."
The model builds are really outstanding and techniques can be learned from all of them, regardless of what scale you build. However, since I'm a 1/72 modeler I really enjoy Libor Jekl's builds of the C-47 and PR XIX Spitfire. He's done an outstanding job and I know I will be using techniques he has written about.
Unfortunately you can tell this is a book written in "the West". There is only one page of VVS profiles (as opposed to five RAF pages, five USAAF pages and five Axis pages) and no VVS models. You could argue that since this book is titled "D-Day to VE Day" the focus should be on the West, but in that case why include the USSR at all, both in the History and the single page of color profiles? Maybe they're planning a separate title for the VVS sometime in the future? But will it be just a snapshot in time (like this book is) or, as is the usual Western fashion, will it be an overall book making it feel like a "jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none" publication? Time will tell.
My other, more minor quibble is not including 1/144. The scale is really taking off (no pun intended) and there are more than enough subjects in the scale that would be perfect for this publication. The recent release of Mark I's Ta 152s come to mind, just for starters.
Regardless of my opinions above this is a title worth tracking down both for the History time-line and the model builds. They are truly some outstanding models.
My thanks to Valiant Wings Publishing for sending the review book.