Over the last couple of years, I've become quite attracted to Harpia's books on world wide air forces. In particular, I've found the MiG books to be excellent. They are superbly researched as best as can be and the authors are completely neutral in terms of the political situation revolving around their use. The narrative sticks to the facts (as well as they are known) and it does not hesitate to admit it when the facts are fuzzy or contradictory. It is this approach that makes the books so appealing.

This is their second volume on the operation of MiG and Sukhoi fighters in sub-Saharan Africa. This is an area filled with paranoid governments where secrets are a way of life and finding out any information is often tedious and time consuming. There are huge gaps in available information as governments are quite fluid and record keeping is frequently spotty at best. While often the authors will interview the parties who were involved, often time double checking their commentary shows considerable bias in one way or the other. Finding photographs of the subject aircraft is also exceedingly difficult where foreigners with cameras are often seen as spies. Despite this, there are quite a few excellent photos in the book, most of which I've never seen.

The book provides complete stats on the aircraft and nations in question and there are well over 100 full color profiles of many of the planes in question, their schemes gleaned from personal recollections along with those few images I mentioned that even include stills from television broadcasts.

This is book was published in 2011 with additional information added in regards to the first edition, mostlyl photos, which is quite nice for the enthusiast. This volume starts where the first left off and covers Madagascar to Zimbabwe. Each nation is covered alphabetically with a brief history of the nation's air arm though it concentrates on their use of MiGs and Sukhois. In several cases, the history is quite extensive and that includes the seemingly endless wars that have plagued this part of the world. Since the book is on MiG and Sukhoi aircraft in service, these wars are pretty much those in which these aircraft participated. Thus we get conflicts from the great nation-building period of the early 1960s when most European powers left their previous colonies. In most cases, the names of the countries changed shortly thereafter. In line with the first volume, I learned more about those nation's conflicts from this book than from any other source and this information alone is worth the cover price of the book. One of the appendices I found particularly interesting was on Chad's Antonov bombers.

It is a book that any aviation enthusiast will find interesting and entertaining. I know that while reading it, I spent quite a bit of time researching possible models and looking for decals! It is a great resource and book that I most highly recommend.

P.S. Note that the cover shown at the Casemate website is different than what is on the book, but it is the same volume.

February 2016

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

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