"Luftwaffe Fighter Aircraft in Profile"
by Claes Sundin & Christer Bergstrom

Schiffer

Reviewed by Brett Green

Scale modelling has boomed over the last decade, and it is not only kits and accessories that have seen dramatic increases in quantity. Not long ago the release of good reference books was a relatively rare occurrence. Even when a book was released, the format was often inappropriate or inefficient for the purpose of scale modelling. How many expensive hardback books have you bought beacause you wanted a couple of good photos? (What, its just me?)

Things have changed somewhat, but even amongst the flood of new publications some books stand out. This is one of them.

"Luftwaffe Fighter Aircraft in Profile" is an ideal book for scale modellers. It supplies a concentrated dose of Luftwaffe colour schemes via no less than 124 full colour profiles in its 141 pages.

The book opens with a brief explanation of German fighter tactics, and a summary of Luftwaffe fighter camouflage and markings. The rest of the book is presented in a no-nonsense format that focuses on camouflage and markings. Each aircraft profile consists of a few paragraphs of history of the aircraft or its pilot, one photograph of the aircraft and/or its pilot, and one side view colour rendering of the subject aircraft. The profiles are organised chronologically.

The well-researched colour renderings are beautifully prepared. My benchmark for colour reference artwork has long been Richard Goyat's striking paintings in the Kookaburra series "Planes of the Luftwaffe Fighter Aces"; and Marco Gueli's colour plates in Monogram's "The Messerschmitt 109 in Italian Service 1943-1945". The artwork in this book meets these standards, and is all the more remarkable for the sheer number of subjects.

Aircraft are portrayed in lightened tones in an attempt to convey the dreaded "scale effect". Without getting myself embroiled in that controversy, let me just say that I think the colours look good!

The authors attempt to display at least one of each operational Luftwaffe single-seated day fighter. Only a few sub-types miss out. Late-war camouflage schemes dominate.

"Luftwaffe Fighter Aircraft in Profile" holds a unique position in its presentation of such an impressive range of well researched, high quality material.

It may have been nice to see a few four-view profiles (i.e. top bottom and both sides), and it may have been nice to have a description of the colour schemes of particular aircraft - especially for some of the less-standard final schemes found on Fw 190 Ds and Bf 109 G/Ks.

In summary, though, this book can be thoroughly recommended as a bountiful source of inspiration to any modeller even slightly interested in Luftwaffe aircraft!

Samples of the colour artwork in this book may be viewed at Claes Sundin's website, "Luftwaffe Fighter Aces and Aircraft", and also the Photo Feature of Chris Wauchop's 1/48 scale Focke Wulf Fw 190D-9.

Review by Brett Green, April 1998.
Page Created 04 May, 1998.
Last updated 22 July, 2003.

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