Undoubtedly the most successful of the mass-produced WW2 Italian fighters is the Macchi C.202 'Folgore' (Lightning). The Italians have a reputation for designing superb aircraft. They handle well and look great. However, their aero engines have generally been underpowered. Fortunately for the industry, Mussolini was a buddy of Herr Hitler and was able to get some German technology into the aero industry. Most effective was the Daimler Benz series of inline engines. It was the DB.601 that turned the mediocre Macchi C.200 into the superb Macchi C.202.

Now that there was a good airframe and a good engine, the other thing that needed improved was the armament. Frankly a couple of machine guns just didn't hack it in modern warfare. Getting wise, later versions of the 202 were more heavily armed. These aircraft could easily take on the best that the Allies had to put against them, including the Spitfire. Unfortunately for the Italians, they just could not make enough MC.202s, despite having an additional production line open at Breda and SAI. 

The MC.202 went on to spawn the MC.205 with a more powerful DB.605 engine in it. Several 202s survived the war and use with the AMI to be placed into museums where aircraft enthusiasts can see them. In the US, there is one at the Smithsonian Air and Space museum.

Maurizio Di Terlizza is an author who also happens to be a superb modeler. Thanks to that fortuitous combination, he is able to produce books that are just perfect for the modeler. They combine enough background history to get the feel of the aircraft and then gives us lots of nice closeup shots and images from Macchi tech books to be truly useful.

The book is written in both English and Italian. It is in a two column format with Italian on the left and English on the right. It seems to work quite well and is very readable. The only thing is, English is not the author's main language and some of the sentence structure and wording used in the translation takes a bit of getting used to!

For some stats, the book is 8 1/2 by 11 inches, 64 pages, card cover, lots of photos and drawings with many of the photos in color. There are also a half dozen profiles and some of the color photos are period shots from the war.

There are four sections in the book. The first one is a brief history of the 202, and I mean brief as in two pages. What makes this section are the number of photographs that this jaded editor has not seen before. They do a good job of illustrating the history of the plane. Next is a modeling section. This concentrates on the 1/48 Hasegawa kits. It also goes over the difference between the different versions of 202 and what needs to be done to the kits to properly model each variant. It is, to me, the best part of the book. There are a number of photos of Maurizio's superb models in this section. Also mentioned are some of the more useful aftermarket sets. 

The third section is on color schemes. To me, this section could have been better done. The different schemes are confusing enough as it is and though he tried, the author was unable to clear up the main differences to my satisfaction. It doesn't help that the brief descriptions of the various schemes was in one, very long sentence! It would have been better done by describing a scheme and then using one of the profiles to illustrate that scheme.

The fourth section, which isn't named, follows directly after the color section. It is a series of closeups and factory drawings showing various parts of the aircraft. This section will be of a lot of use to the superdetailer. Finally, there is a one-page appendix giving a color cross-reference chart as well as listing available decals and accessories available. All the items are in 1/48. It would have been nice to have a kit listing in both scales as well as a listing of 1/72 bits and pieces available.

Overall it is a very nice book and one that modelers of WW2 Italian aircraft should have in their library. My enthusiasm for it  is dampened somewhat by the few glitches mentioned. I can only hope that the author reads this and makes improvements in upcoming editions. This edition is dated October 1999 and is part 1 so we can hope to see a part 2 later on.

This book and other WW2 Italian AF subjects can be obtained direct from the importer at the link below.

Review copy courtesy of  the fine folks at Pacific Coast Models Inc.

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