This latest Walk Around title is a favorite of many of us, the A-4 Skyhawk. It is a plane that has had a great amount of success and variants have been around for over fifty years with some still operational with Brazil and with Israel.

Author Lou Drendel has chosen an interesting way to do this volume. Usually the Walkaround series has a brief history of the type and is then followed by page after page of closeup areas of the different variants of the subject, most of these being from museums with some images from tech manuals.

In this case, it is not done like this. In fact, I would guess that only about half the book is close-up images of the airframe, with a goodly portion of those being Israeli Skyhawks from Israbooks' Ra'anan Weiss. Ra'anan's images are all in full color. The rest of the book is about half and half color and monochrome images. We get a great number of images of the aircraft in action or in unit service with the images frequently covering the full width of the page, which is quite nice.

All of the different variants from the A-4A to the A-4S are covered including most of the foreign operators of the Skyhawk. The differences in the variants are pointed out with the usual line drawings. A full five view of an A-4E is also provided. Now here is where there may be a bit of confusion. You see, the A-4E drawn has the avionics hump that was first installed on the A-4F and then later retrofitted to quite a few remaining E airframes. The A-4E as initially delivered and for some of its operational service did not have this feature. Just an FYI, the only way to really tell is by serial number with the last A-4E being 152100.

Though it is the bevy of Skyhawk photos that makes this such a great edition, you will find all of the usual items like cockpit photos, landing gear images, engine photos and so on that you expect from a Walk Around edition. It is a book that I found to be a delightful read and one that I know you will be using over and over again.

 Most highly recommended.

PS, because the book's photo of a VF-126 A-4M was poorly lit, here is a good clear one for you.

February 2013

My thanks to Squadron Products for the review copy. Get yours today at your favorite shop or on-line retailer.

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