From the same folks who bring the excellent Armor Photogallery books comes this first aircraft in the 'Aero PhotoGallery' series; the Albatros B.II. This aircraft was developed in 1914 as a general purpose airplane and was generally used as a trainer or unit hack. In these roles it was quite successful, being used throughout the war. As fighters and bombers were being developed and quickly becoming obsolete, the Albatros B.II continued in use. In fact, the aircraft was built post-war by Germany (to help pay off reparations) and in Sweden as the Sk.1. A near copy was built in Russia as the Lebed XI.

Just as was done in the Armor books, this one relies heavily on museum aircraft and the author was fortunate enough to have two of these aircraft (both post-war builds) close by. One is in the Polish Aviation Museum in Cracow and the other in the Swedish Aviation Museum in Linkoping. Both aircraft are nicely restored and similar to each other in that they are both powered by Mercedes 120 hp water-cooled six cylinder engines.

The photographs are superb. They are crisp and show all the various aspects of the two aircraft, leaving no detail unphotographed. The photo walk around section is followed by three view plans in both 1/72 and 1/48 scale. Then there is a historical section with large period photos of the B.II in German and Polish service. This is followed on the inside back cover by four superbly drawn color profiles.

All in all, this is a most complete book on this interesting WWI aircraft and as such is highly recommended.

April 2005

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