Published: Dalrymple & Verdun Publishing
DVP Now area
Author: Tony O’Toole
Price around £24.95 GBP
Soft back; 176 pages; mainly black and white images (132) with some in colour (9); full colour (mostly all-aspect) profiles (30 pages) for representative aircraft from all sides featuring in the conflict
ISBN: 9781905414185
Reviewed by Geoff Coughlin (Feb 2014)
Our thanks to DVP for supplying our review sample. Get this excellent title here now at: Dalrymple & Verdun Publishing
Introduction
The Air Battle of Malta has been the topic of countless books since the end of World War Two and has always been a subject of great interest to the author who has produced a detailed narrative, primarily from the Allies perspective, of Malta’s aerial defence (and offence) from June 1940 to September 1941.
This volume deals with the early years of the siege imposed upon Malta when small numbers of RAF Sea Gladiators and Hurricanes, occasionally accompanied by a handful of Fleet Air Arm Fulmars, blunted Axis aerial attacks against the islands at a time when an embryonic Malta-based strike force began to emerge that would develop to become the scourge of Axis supply convoys across the Mediterranean.
An additional aspect of the author’s approach to this book is his fresh examination of the camouflage schemes worn by the combatant aircraft involved in this battle, particularly those employed by the British. Using evidence garnered from a number of sources, including interviews and correspondence with veterans and by reinterpretation of selected photographs, reappraisals of the colours worn by many of the aircraft are considered.
Great value to scale modellers
This book is very welcome for scale modellers, not least because little has been written about this specific period of the Conflict at all, even less from a scale modelling perspective. This title has now changed that. The whole text is profusely illustrated and because the aircraft date back to WWII some photos are necessarily in black and white. Several colour images are included though although colour really comes into its own with the inclusion of many all-aspect colour profiles within the book. The profiles are inspirational and will give you plenty of scope for choosing an appropriate subject for your Allied or Axis models.
There are some fantastic images in the book that will prove invaluable for weathering your Bf 110Ds, Bf 109Es, Hawker Hurricanes, Spitfires or Italian SM.79s plus many more. I particularly like the coverage of more unusual types such as the 69 Sqn RAF Luqa, Malta Martin 167F (Maryland I) and Italian Cant Z.1007bis.
The quality and colouration of the profiles is superb and add greatly to the buy-ability of this book.
Book structure
There are 3 chapters, multiple Appendices and Bibliography.
Recommended
Geoff C.