IPMS/USA Reviews

David Doyle is a well-known author of over 100 books published since 2003, covering a wide range of military subjects. Adding aircraft and warship subjects to his already lengthy list of published books covering military vehicles, Doyle's portfolio of publications continues to expand rapidly, while maintaining the highest degree of quality, accuracy, and depth of coverage.

The Author

Alan Ranger was educated mostly in the UK, He started his carrier in the Royal Engineer's Regiment of the British Army. Since then specializing in turbines from the early 1980's on he has been involved in various engineering projects around the world for a number of major global companies.

He has had a number of books and articles published over the years mostly industry related but has also has been published before in this field with books published by Model Art of Japan. He is a collector of World War II Militaria and has also accumulated a large collection of original period photographs on this subject matter. His interests are centered around World War II history in general, specializing in the vehicles both soft skin and armoured as used by the German and Japanese armed forces during the conflict.

As he now approaches retirement employed as a Project Development Manager by Europe's major Turbine manufacturer he looks forward to devoting more time to his interests including writing many more books based upon this subject matter.

Neil Stokes is a noted Soviet armor enthusiast and this is at least his third photobook in this series, with prior books covering the Su-76; KV; along with the Su-85 and Su-100 on the Battlefield. He has also authored KV: Technical History & Variants; a 560 page beast published in 2010 by Airconnection. Neil is an active member of AMPS (Armor Modeling & Preservation Society) and you can find him on www.amps-armor.org .

This latest installment in the World War II Photobook series follows up on Volume 1 by Peter Kocsis, published in 2013. The four page Introduction is in both Hungarian and English provides a summary of the development and operational usage of the Soviet T-34. Featuring primarily unpublished photographs from private collections, each photograph is on its own glossy page with dual language captioning. If you happen to be looking for Volume 1, although it has been out of print, it would appear that it will make another appearance in 2019.

For those of us who attended the IPMS Nationals in 2017, we were able to see the 1/48 scale M1A2 that Tamiya would soon be releasing. I built the original 1/35 Tamiya offering in the 1980's as the tank was just entering service, and I knew that I would need this new release in a smaller scale. The folks at Hauler have released a photoetch set to improve detail on some items and add more/missing details in other areas. I would highly recommend this set to modelers building this Abrams tank, but also recommend that you have experience with some rather small detail parts.

This set comes with two frets of thin brass holding 75 numbered parts, and there are over three dozen additional parts for instances when multiple parts share the same number (such as the tow cable supports). There are only a few items that have spares included, which is why I recommend that a person have some PE experience before taking on this set. The instructions are covered on two sheets of paper with black and white drawings on both sides of each sheet.

AFV Club has released the third version of Israeli's rework of the venerable American M109 Self-Propelled Howitzer (SPH). This time around we meet the 'Doher', or 'Galloper' - an augmented boxing of their recent 'Rochev Bet' release. The M109A2 Doher was fielded in 1993, eventually replacing all of the earlier Rochev models in active service by 1997. After the active service units received their share, the IDF began to replace some of the reserve units' vehicles. Today one can find in the reserve units both the Doher & Rochev models.