Korean War: The First Jet-vs-Jet Air Battles
By Matt Bittner
Author: Patrick Branly
Publisher: Valiant Wings Publishing
ISBN #: 978-0-9930908-2-0
Binding: Softcover
Pages: 82
This Airframe Extra from Valiant Wings Publishing covers the Korean War. It starts out covering the generalites of why the war started and includes a look at both sides, again, in a general sense. The book is broken out thusly:
- History
- USAF and ROKAF Profiles
- MiG-15bis 1/72 Build
- Seafire FR Mk.47 1/72 Build
- USN Profiles
- F7F-3N Tigercat 1/48 Build
- Firefly FR Mk.4/5 1/48 Build
- Colour Reference
- NKAF Profiles
- F-86F Sabre Jet 1/32 Build
- RNAF Profiles
- RAAF/SAAF Profiles
While the first release under the Airframe Extra – D-Day to VE Day – gave a bulleted chronology of events, this title provides the chronology in prose form. It starts, naturally, with the invasion of South Korea by the North Koreans and goes from there. Due to the nature of the book it makes sense that only the most important parts of the war – especially those aviation-related – are presented.
Unfortunately I have a problem with the book. According to a sentence in the Foreward:
"Whether your interest lies in one set of combatants or both there should be plenty here to sow the seeds of modelling inspiration."
I couldn't disagree more. This is definitely a book written from the west's viewpoint as there is very little when it comes to any of the Communist side. Amongst the photographs presented in the book there are only two that are of NKAF (or any other Communist) aircraft. While you have a superlative build of the Eduard 1/72 MiG-15bis by expert modeler Libor Jekl there are only two pages of color profiles for the Communists and one of those pages is of a single MiG-15. In fact, of the five separate NKAF-profiled aircraft, three of them are MiG-15s. While it's true the MiG-15 played a large part in the air-to-air war, there were far more types than just this single-seat fighter. So aside from the MiG-15 build it's best to look elsewhere when wanting any type of history or modeling inspiration for "the other side" (but part of the problem, too, is that – as far as I know – there hasn't been much history written from "the other side").
And since I'm picking nits, I might as well point out another flaw in the history section of the book. According to the author the F-82G was:
"Made by linking a pair of P-51 fuselages via a short centre section..."
This fallacy has been out for quite some time but has been debunked years ago since the F-82 was a completely new design from North American for a specific mission.
However, the model builds are very well done and plenty of just-modeling inspiration can be gleaned, regardless of scale. All of the build articles have something that could further along your model making ability. So for those sections alone I can recommend this book.
I definitely thank Valiant Wings Publishing for sending this book to review.