The Great Book of Aircraft (Elite Attack Forces) Review

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(More customer reviews)Originally published in Italy in 2006, GREAT BOOK OF COMBAT AIRCRAFT was then translated into English and imported to the U.S. by Metro Books. After leafing through it, you wonder why they bothered. In just about every area - design, narrative, accuracy and artwork - this book is awful. Typically found on Remainder shelves "bargain priced at $24.98," it ain't no bargain...Trust me!
Paolo Matricardi's book traces the development of combat aircraft in the 20th Century. Four-hundred-and-thirty-two pages in length, it includes 139 side profiles or multi-view profiles of various aircraft and hundreds of b&w and color photographs.
Of those 139 profiles, many are either inaccurate drawings of the aircraft or the colors are wrong OR both. Examples include the P-40, Ar 234, AV-8 Harrier, P-36, Spitfire, Ki-43, B-25, B-24, Cessna Bird Dog, P-51D, Me262, F-4B, Nieuport 17 and on and on and on. I haven't seen artwork this bad since the early 1960s.
Whoever designed the book has some REAL interesting ideas of layout. Several of the profiles cut off the tail section, either by placing a photo on top of it or by placement on the page so that the edge cuts off part of the profile. Exactly how much value does the profile of a tail-less Sopwith Camel have to a modeller?
The translation to English wasn't a roaring success either. Whoever translated the book doesn't known aviation terminology. The worst example is the book's description of the F-35 which is termed "an intelligent polyvalent attack aircraft." Polyvalent?!? Did they mean "multi-role?" Another example - the Mosquito is termed "a fighter, scout (and) bomber." I think the term is "photo-recce" not "scout," guys.
Though the text is generally accurate, statements like the one claiming the MiG-23 came out before the MiG-21 leave me uneasy.
Lastly, the arrangement of the book is clumsy. Chapters include Origins, WWI, Golden Age, WWII, Korea, etc. But, within the WWII chapter, for example, the first chapters focus on Germany, Italy, Japan, Great Britain, America, Russia, France and other countries and then devote sections to fighter development, bomber development, engine development, naval aviation, great air battles, the Blitz and the Stuka, etc. All of that info could have been presented in a less unwieldy arrangement.
So, for lots of reasons, this book is a dud. Don't buy it unless you're desperate for an aviation history book fix! It's truly awful.

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