Military Model Scene

Title: Ultimate Allied Fighters of the Second World War
Author: Justo Miranda
Publisher: Fonthill Media
ISBN: 978-1-78155-888-1

This is a new book examining the many Allied projects in the later stages of WW2, as powerful piston engines and the early jets were leading to a plethora of strange looking designs. A 384-page hard-cover book which adds to the author's earlier books on the late war Luftwaffe designs.
The book is split into 5 main sections, for American, British, French, Australian and Soviet projects, though they vary in size. The American section fills 12 chapters, some covering a single type, other with multiple variants. Britain accounts for 10 chapters, France 2, Australia 1 and Soviet 3. Some many readers may recognise as a few prototypes were actually built, while most of the designs we see never went further than the drawing board. Throughout the book there are lots of line drawings, some just profiles, with others having multiple views. The only unfortunate thing I gelt was that these scale plans are not to a constant scale, more that they are sized to best fit the pages. Having said that there are scale bars provided but it will mean a bit more work for the modeller who is interested in trying to build them in model form. Obviously there are far too many to try and mention everything in a review like this, but there are a few that stuck out for me which I think many will find intriguing. Just to pick out a few, how about a twin-engined P40, the Curtis XP-55, some strange variations on the P47 Thunderbolt, P51 variants with forward swept wings or pulse-jets under the wings, and the weird looking Gluhareff Dart. In the British section, how about a Hurricane fitted with a circular degaussing coil. the Spitfire 'Rammer', a Hawker Sea-Phoon with folding wings, the weird Blackburn B-44 and plenty more. I was especially pleased to see the inclusion of the Miles M35 & M43 as I am a regular volunteer at the Museum of Berkshire Aviation at Woodley in Berkshire, where Miles Aircraft were based. I should also mention one section of 8-pages of colour artwork profiles showing what some of these might have looked like had they gone into production.
I found this to make some fascinating reading, with designs that include the really weird and wonderful, as the increased speeds of the ever more powerful piston engines and the early jest introduced plenty of new issues in aerodynamics and compressibility buffeting. Designs with 4, 4, 5 or even 6 propellers are featured. There is even a Spitfire with a ramjet underneath it! Aviation enthusiasts will enjoy this I think, while it will also spark plenty of ideas in the minds of modellers who I think could be inspired to have a go at trying to reproduce some of these.
Thanks to Fonthill Media for our review copy.

Robin