Authors: Tony Buttler, David Collins and Martin Derry
Published: Dalrymple & Verdun Publishing
£24.95
Soft back; 144 pages; mainly black and white images with some in colour; full colour (mostly all-aspect) profiles for Hornet and Sea Hornet
ISBN 978-1-905414-12-3
Reviewed by Geoff Coughlin
Our thanks to Martin Derry for supplying our review sample. Get this excellent title here
The sub-title for this new text from Dalrymple and Verdun Publishing says it all about the subject – De Havilland’s ultimate piston-engined fighter. The functional and purposeful look of the Hornet and Sea Hornet – clipped wings, Rolls Royce 130 Series Merlin engines and slim profile all contrived to give the Hornet a performance just about as good as you could get from a piston-engined aircraft; around 470-490mph at altitude.
This book is very welcome for scale modellers, not least because so little has been written about the type at all, even less from a scale modelling perspective. That has now changed with the publication of this book. The whole text is profusely illustrated and because the aircraft dates back to the end of WWII most images are necessarily in black and white. Some colour images are included although colour really comes into its own with the inclusion of many all-aspect colour profiles towards the end of the book. The Hornet and Sea Hornet are addressed well in the profiles and so this will give you plenty of scope for choosing an appropriate subject for your Hornet scale model. The latter may be tricky though as so few kits exist of the Hornet in any form (The Special Hobby 1:72 kits come to mind…).
There are some fantastic images in the book that will prove invaluable for weathering your Hornet or Sea Hornet – like the exhaust staining that’s extensive beneath the main wings from the RR Merlin engines. Some useful images of the wing-fold too if you are building a Royal Navy Sea Hornet and so it goes on.
The quality and colouration of the profiles is superb and add greatly to the buy-ability of this book.
Read about the book structure…
