- White Series No. 9109
- By: Glenn White
- Published: Published Stratus available in UK from Mushroom Model Publications
- 144 pages A4 profusely illustrated throughout, mostly colour images with a few black and white. English text throughout.
- Price at time of review £24.99 from MMP
- ISBN 978-83-89450-47-0
Reviewed by Geoff Coughlin
Our thanks to Stratus – Mushroom Model Publications for supplying the review sample. Get this excellent title here now at: www.mmpbooks.biz
Go on then…guess, how many? Five, maybe even six? Guess again… no less than 17 survivors. Unbelievable and sadly only two still in airworthy condition – PA474 known to all in the UK and one Lanc FM213 still flying in Canada. It is unfortunate that of the 17,000 Lancasters built only this few survive – there was little appetite after WWII for aircraft preservation when most people wanted to get on and put the war behind them.
The latest book in the MMP White Series is a survey of all surviving Avro Lancasters around the world. The author describes the operational career of each aircraft, the sometimes tortuous routes by which they survived, and describes and illustrates their current status and condition. Images of the aircraft in service and after are joined by the comprehensive detail photos of their current state. These show all aspects of their airframes and highlight the superb restoration work seen on them. Seventeen Lancasters are represented, currently in Britain, Canada, France, Australia, New Zealand and the USA.
The all-colour walk-around style images covering the interior of the airframes will undoubtedly tip the scales for many aircraft scale modellers and I can’t recommend the coverage highly enough – excellent. I particularly like the chapter layout, working through each country that still has an airframe and dealing with all that reside there.
This title is dedicated to all those who have worked so hard over the years to save and restore these magnificent aeroplanes, and also to those who flew and serviced the iconic “Lanc” during its long service career, in WW2 and after.
So from a modellers’ perspective this is an ideal choice – it has most of what we look for – plenty of good full colour imagery, well researched and authoritative text and, perhaps best of all, it will save you the expense of travelling to five continents trying to visit them all! You can read all you need to know from you favourite chair. Indeed, this good book will appeal to many beyond the scale modelling fraternity – those with a general interest in aviation, military history and of course, all who have had anything at all to do with the Lanc.
With so many decent scale models of the Avro Lancaster available from Tamiya, Hasegawa and Revell and Airfix all you need to get started is a good quality reference. Increasingly we are being treated to really excellent one-stop shop reference works and this just went up by one. Well done to Glenn White and MMP for adding another excellent volume to the shelves.
Highly recommended
Geoff C.