The most recent Warbird Tech book from Specialty Press is this volume on the MiG-29 Fulcrum by acknowledged Russian aircraft expert Yefim Gordon. In line with other books in the series, it provides a full history of the aircraft from its initial design stages up until its current production version, the MiG-29SMT.

In between are over 200 black & white photos showing the past and current models, including several pages of full color. This is accompanied by a well done section of drawings that provide the differences between the variants.

In the hands of a well trained pilot, the MiG-29 can get the best of the current crop of US fighters as has been shown a number of times when the Luftwaffe's Fulcrums had a chance to mix it up with US units during several occasions. Like the previous MiG-21, the Fulcrum has had success in the export market as well with aircraft being purchased by countries from Peru, to Poland, to India and Malaysia. As the MiG-29 had just started being exported to Warsaw Pact countries with the fall of the Soviet Union, most of them have the aircraft as well as a number of the newly formed republics. Ukraine has a substantial number of these aircraft and is the second largest operator of the type.

All of this is fully covered and the book also includes a walk-around feature and complete systems and weapons description. An area that should be of interest to many of you is a comparison section where the airframe and various systems are compared to what is available in the 'best of the West'.

Overall, an outstanding book on Russia's best dogfighter. What makes it even more appealing is that it is very competitively priced.

September2005

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