North Africa Campaign 10th June 1940 to 13th May 1943, Airframe Extra No.9
Published by Valiant Wings in March 2018, 82 pages. A4 size softback (N6916)
Brand New
Brand New
This fully illustrated booklet covers the historical aspects of the battles on the ground and in the air in North Africa from Italy's declaration of war on France and the United Kingdom on the 10th June 1940 through to the surrender of all Axis forces in Tunisia on the 13th May 1943....
From the introduction: Welcome to our ninth Airframe Extra title. This time we are rolling the clock back from our previous title on the air war over Italy to the North African Campaign which provided the springboard to later campaigns in Sicily and Italy.
The desert was probably made for war and favoured neither side. Vast expanses of arid landscape challenged navigational skills. Extreme heat and cold and upper air temperatures altered aircraft performances from their normal European environments. Sand played havoc with moving parts and was the enemy of aircraft engines. Any slip or lack of concentration in navigation or fuel level reading could ultimately be fatal as much as being shot down in combat. The potential for the former is well documented in Roald Dahl's 'Solo'. It's a good read.
The North Africa Campaign threw up new challenges for aircraft engineers as they devised new engine sand filters to avoid their charges being grounded. The conflict spawned new varieties of concealment camouflage. European greens gave way to sand and brown to better blend in with operating environments. This transition has been captured very well by Richard Caruana's special set of profiles commissioned for this title. The amount available is bewildering and we had quite a challenge striking the right balance so that all the protagonists were properly represented. We hope that we've done them justice.
Patrick Branly has pulled out all the stops and described the ebb and flow of the conflict in his usual excellent style. For those of you with an interest in modelling the period Steve Evans and Libor Jekl have produced some wonderful examples of modelling skills in four different scales. Both 1/32 and 1/144 scales are growing in popularity so we haven't forgotten either in this title. All the builds are eye-poppingly superb but Steve's Ju 52 is just exquisite...
Please note, there is a price printed on the front cover, and a small price sticker on the rear side.