Military Model Scene

Title: Japanese Heavy Fighters 1937-1945
Author: Dariusz Paduch
Publisher: Kagero
ISBN: 978-83-66673-89-2

An interesting new title from Kagero, covering the aircraft the Japanese classified as 'heavy' fighters, including some which were only built in prototype form and others which never went beyond the design stage. A large format 240-page soft-cover book.
After the helpful Author's Note at the beginning, the book is divided into 3 sections. The first tackles the aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service, with 19 different designs all individually detailed. Section 2 does the same thing for 13 machines for the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service, along with some designs intended as misinformation. The final part details the various types of machine gun and canon which armed the aircraft featured in the book. Lots of archive photos throughout the book, along with line drawings of many of the designs, though sadly not to any given scale, so you'll need to refer to the technical details provided to work their scale for each one. At the end of the book, just 4-pages of fine colour profile artwork.
With the text, the tables of basic technical data, the plans and the archive photos, this is a good reference for aviation historians with an interest in the war in the Pacific, and of course also for modellers. While canon armament was part of the criteria for the 'heavy' classification, unlike many other air forces, there was often no armour fitted, which obviously made them lighter in weight. An interesting reference for these WW2 Japanese aircraft designs.
Thanks to Casemate UK for our review copy.

Robin