I strongly believe that whatever intellectual accomplishments I have gained in my life came from modeling, from looking at a model airplane I had built and asking "What did that airplane do?" followed by "What was that war about?" and "How did it happen?" In answer to these questions, my father began taking me to the public library to find the answers. Eventually I came to really love spending all day Saturday at the Main Branch of the Denver Public Library, where there was a huge collection of military and aviation history volumes. This would be followed during the week with a trip to the hobby shop to pick up a model of something I had seen in a picture and try to recreate it. My interest in modeling fed my interest in history, which fed a further interest in modeling and... you get the picture.

I have long argued that one of the problems in the current resurgence of modeling is that the boys who left the hobby at age 14 when they discovered girls have returned in their 30s equipped with the hand-eye coordination of adults and the knowledge of children. Unfortunately - at least in the U.S. over the past 25 years - the quality of education in the field of history has been severely "dumbed-down". Few boys think it fun to spend a Saturday as I did, assuming the books in the libraries haven't been eaten by the rats, given the current state of public support of such activity.

Therefore, I am always on the lookout for books that not only educate a modeler about an airplane and the hobby of model airplane building, but also provide an education about the world that airplane inhabited, for those who might be interested. This new "Luftwaffe Colours" series, which has only been published this year, is the perfect example of the kind of books I look for to recommend. They do exactly that.

While I received both books together, I am read Volume 2, "The Spanish Civil War," out of order, inasmuch as it was the one that grabbed my attention. As the son of a father who was arrested in 1938 for violation of the Neutrality Act when his airplane forcelanded outside Brownsville, Texas, full of Springfield rifles and Colt machine guns on their way to Mexico for further transshipment to the Spanish Republic, the "overture" to the Second World War has always interested me. My copy of George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" is dogeared from repeat readings.

It would be impossible for someone like me who believes the bombing of Guernica was the first war crime of the Second World War to write this book. The author Eric Mombeek - who obviously views the war differently - has managed to produce a balanced and straightforward history of the war in the air as experienced during the Spanish Civil War. He begins with a very readable understandable account of the political complexities leading up to the war and a deft account of the battles from the introduction of the first six Luftwaffe fighter pilots in the summer of 1936 through to the end of the struggle in 1939.

"Birth of the Luftwaffe Fighter Force" performs a similar accomplishment, in detailing the death of the German Air Force following the defeat in the First World War, and the development of the "secret air force" under General Hans von Seeckt in the 1920s. Additonal short biographies are provided for all the major personalities in German aviation who influenced the development of what would become the Luftwaffe. This is good and useful history, and one could escape studying weightier books by reading these if your aim is to have a good basic understanding of things.

I particularly like the fact that these books do not depend - as do so many - on the tired old pictures we have all looked at to death. There are - to me - never-before seen photographs of the airplanes used in the Spanish Civil War and the equipment of the early Luftwaffe; a number of photos that obviously came from personal collections, of the men who flew the airplanes. This is no doubt due to the assistance provided by such researchers as Karl Ries and Hans Obert - among several others of equal quality and knowledge - who receive credit in the book.

As an historical writer myself, I particularly enjoy first-person memoirs as "illuminations of history," both these books have a number of accounts, with those relating to the Spanish Civil War outnumbering those in the other volume merely due to the fact there were more involed in the war who are still around; accounts of the war as seen by such German pilots as Hannes Trautloft, Hajo Harder,.Wolf-Heinrich von Houwald, and Eduard Neumann, among others are fascinating and bring the period fully to life.

For the modeler, the real treats in both books are the profiles. Thomas Tullis in recent years has emerged as the foremost aircraft profile artists currently working; as a very good profile artist I know says, "Tullis is God." That such a statement is merely descriptive of the truth is apparent from even a cursory look at the work. The profiles are the proper colors, and the markings are well researched. There are contemporary photographs of each airplane profiled, for the reader to study. As an additional treat, Aeromaster is releasing a two-sheet set of decals of the aircraft profiled, for each of these books, and I am informed this will continue through the whole series. For these first two books, Classic Airframes should re-release the He-51 and Hobbycraft their early Bf-109s, because modelers are going to be hunting these kits down. I for one will be dusting off the Karo-As vacuform of the Ar-68E (a very good one, by the way).

The books are in large format, printed on good quality paper in quality hard-stock covers. This is going to be a series every serious modeler interested in the Luftwaffe is going to have on their shelves as the 12 volumes of the series are published. Highly recommended.

Thanks to Squadron Mail Order for the review copies.