The Ju-88 was very much the Luftwaffe's multi-role combat aircraft. A jack of all trades that while envisioned as a standard bomber with dive bombing capabilities, it evolved into much more. It was used as a torpedo bomber, heavy fighter, night fighter and also as a high speed transport.

This book, however, concentrates on the early operations of the aircraft from its initial introduction until the end of 1940. It is divided into four major sections; early development, the fall of France and Battle of Britain, the Blitz, and finally a section on training.

This is, like others in the series, pretty much a photo book and so rather light on major background information. You get this from the captions to all the photos, and the Ju-88 was extensively photographed.

It is probably not too surprising that a goodly number of the images in this book are of planes that have crashed. Those that met an ignominious fate as the result of accidents are from the German side of things and those shot down were extensively photographed by the British and other Allies. Not to say that everything is a crash image as that is very much not the case, but quite a few are. The benefit of these images is that they are generally quite clear and crisply done so we get to see details that might not be typically visible in the standard snapshot.

In all, this results in an excellent reference book without the usual mass of statistics and charts you get in standard histories. You get to see the plane as it was during operations and it is fortunate for us that so many good images are presented. This is a boon for not only the enthusiast but also for the modeler. It is part of a very good series and what is even better is that these books are at a good price.

I very much enjoyed reading this one and as such, have no problem recommending it to you.

November 2017

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Review book courtesy of  Casemate Publishing, where you can order your copy from this link.

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