Royal Prussian Jagdstaffel 30
By Matt Bittner
Authors: Bruno Schmäling and Winfried Bock
Publisher: Aeronaut Books
ISBN #: 978-1-935881-25-4
Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 208
I won't beat around the bush with this review. If you have any interest in World War I (WWI) you must buy this book. If you have an interest in WWI aviation, you must buy this book. If you have any interest in modeling WWI aviation, you must buy this book. From here on out this is the book others will be measured against when it comes to references written on squadron histories. This is the way to write it.
Why? Because instead of just writing "on such-and-such a day at such-and-such a time, this happened" the authors interject real history and try to back everything up with valid sources. Not only that, but there are passages from Jasta (short for Jagdstaffel) members. For example, in Chapter 2. June 1917 - August 1917 there are a lot of passages from Otto Fuchs' diary to back up day-to-day events.
This is also an excellent modeler's source because not only is there a large section in the back of the book devoted to color profiles, but all of those profiles are backed-up with text within each chapter of the book. Because the chapters are broken up by date groups, the profiles go from earlier aircraft types to later types. There are a lot of aircraft that can be modeled that flew with Jasta 30. I see that Pheon has released 1/32 decals based on the book profiles; hopefully they can scale them into 1/48 and especially 1/72 in the future. I definitely would like to build one of Fuchs' Albatros in the future.
If I had to quibble – and believe me, it's something I have to stretch for as the book is excellent overall – is the lack of top and bottom surface profiles in the color section. There are a few but only for the truly "unusual". It would have been nice to include maybe not a top profile for all aircraft if they were left "standard", but maybe one per era of flight. For example, for the early Albatros include a top view showing the two colors typically applied to the wings of the Albatros, followed by one top profile for the era when the flying surfaces were finished in lozenge, etc.
Other than that small quibble, there's nothing at all wrong with this book. Nothing at all. If you have any interest in what I mentioned in the first paragraph you are doing yourself a disservice if you don't pick up this book.
Huge, huge thanks to Aeronaut Books for providing me the honor of reviewing this book.