IPMS/USA Reviews

This book is part of a series providing detailed information on a particular aircraft intended for scale modelers. It is not a historical account of the service life of the aircraft and does not provide a variety of color schemes for the type as by used by different units. It provides detailed six-view line drawings of the specific aircraft in three scales, plus black and white color photos of several complete aircraft (museum display survivors) and detailed photos of specific parts of the aircraft. Several drawings are included, including an excellent one of the instrument panel, and some drawings from maintenance manuals are includes.

The book is not intended to be a historical coverage of the type, only a detailed reference showing specific parts of the aircraft not included in ordinary references. Other publications provide numerous color and marking varieties for the type, while this one only covers several aircraft, however, in much greater detail. It is heavy on pictures and drawings, and light on the text.

This book is part of a series of highly specialized coverages of specific World War II aircraft types and is intended for serious scale modelers who work in 1/72, 1/48, and 1/32 scale. This book covers the Mitsubishi A6M-5 Zero 52 fighter and serves mainly as a reference for specific details of this particular aircraft type. There is little text other than the captions for photos and drawings, and only covers a few specific aircraft that have survived in museums throughout the world. In this case, the planes in the Imperial War Museum in England, and the Planes of Fame Museum in Chino, California are shown. The Chino airplane may still be flyable, and I recall seeing it flying years ago. One of the photos of it also shows the museum's P-51D and North American O-47A in the background.

Javier Garcia de Gabiola, is from Spain and works as a lawyer. He has published numerous articles and books related to legal issues. Always interested in military history, he also regularly contributes to various Spanish military history magazines, for which he has written more than 50 articles and has published multiple pieces with the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico. This is his first instalment for Helion's @War series.

Helion is a UK based company that produces books on many aspects of Military History from the Late Medieval period through to the present day. Helion was established in 1996, and since then they have published almost 1,200 books, with 100 or more new titles coming out every year, for readers around the world.

If you are looking to learn about the battle for Crete in WWII, Crete, The Battle for Heraklion, 1941 may not be the book for you to start with. This book deals almost exclusively with the battle for the town and airfield of Heraklion, only one of three landing areas for the German paratroopers on Crete. However, if you are interested in the stories of those on the "sharp end of the stick" in a battle, this book is great as it depends heavily on first person accounts of those who were actually there. While some British, Commonwealth and Germans are included, most of the stories are of the Greeks/Cretans involved, which is good because they are usually overlooked or de-emphasized in most histories which tend to concentrate on the German paratroopers or the British and/or Commonwealth forces involved.

The Weathering Aircraft is an offshoot of Mig Jimenez' The Weathering Magazine, a specialized publication designed for modelers of all skill levels and subjects. Each issue delivers to you, the most advanced weathering techniques and the related products used to achieve incredible results.

The Weathering Aircraft latest release is focused on Rarities. Rarities as used in this issue refers to extremely unusual schemes for a particular aircraft. This sixteenth issue is a magazine soft cover of 72 gloss pages (including the covers). The front cover features a color photo of Karim Bibi's Wingnut Wings Early Halberstadt in Royal Prussian Schlasta 21 markings; "3 Martha & Else". This magazine is all about color and I counted 346 glossy color photographs and one black and white photograph. This issue opens up with a loving tribute to Mig Jimenez's wife, Elizabeth Wiese, who passed on 30-December 2019 to cancer far too soon. Elizabeth was instrumental in creating The Weathering Magazine and The Weathering Aircraft. The contents include the following: