Military Model Scene

Title: Junkers Ju 88

Author: Chris Goss

Publisher: Frontline books

ISBN: 978-1-47389-236-1

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A new addition to their Air War Archive series and the second on the subject of the Ju 88.  This one moves the story on beyond the period of the Battle of Britain, to the later variants and operations of this famous twin engine bomber.  I have long thought it a great coincidence that the Ju 88 in the air and the superior 88mm guns used by the ground forces shared that particular number.

In this book we get the second half of the operational story, with the only omission being its' operations as a Night Fighter, which I will guess leaves the door open for a future title on that particular topic.  The first section looks a their Operations Over Russia, which of course gives a starting point of 1941.  Photo in this section all show the glazed nose versions in a variety of situations.  A few show aircraft in the air, but most show them on the ground.  Many are crashed examples, but others show maintenance in the field, on the grass of the Russian Steppes and others with their crews or celebrating some milestone or other.  The second element deals with operations in the Mediterranean theatre, and again with plenty of coverage of crashed/damaged airframes and maintenance operations in the barren expanses of the desert landing grounds.  In section 3 we see Reconnaissance Operations with a lot of crew photos that give some great uniform references and with many photos that indicate a common liking for laurel wreaths to celebrate mission milestones in a unit.  In part 4 something a little different, with Torpedo Operations, and we start to see some fitted with radar aerials on the nose as well as the torpedoes slung underneath. In part 5 we get to Battle Over the Bay V/KG 40 and the solid nose variants of the Ju 88-C.  Part 6 covers The Later Years, 1943-45 and we see an interesting mix of variants and camouflage schemes.  That leaves it to part 7 to round things off, with a good collection of photos which illustrate the Mistel Combinations, with examples of both Fw 190 and Me Bf 109 used as the top aircraft of the pairing.  Both these last two sections include a number of images showing allied service personnel looking over the aircraft left on captured airfields.

 

Another one easy to recommend for Luftwaffe historians as well as modellers.  A host of fascinating archive images, all with helpful captioning to give individual detail.  Modellers I think will like this one for the detail that is shown in the photos and the large number of pictures which can inspire some great diorama ideas.

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Thanks to Pen and Sword for my copy.

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Robin