After reviewing their excellent Spitfire book, the fine folks at Stratus sent me several of their other books. These differ only in being written in Polish with no English in them at all. Now you might think that this would be a disadvantage, and in some ways it is, but basically, for modelers, it detracts very little from the usefulness of this book. One can often glean information from charts and photo captions with little trouble. It is only when the feats of various pilots comes into play that we are left scratching our heads.

The real beauty of this book lies in the photographs and the profiles that it provides. We are in real luck as the book excels in both categories. When you add in that it covers three rather rare types as operated so briefly by Polish pilots, then these are well worth the price.

Three different aircraft are covers. First is the Caudron C.714. As many of you know, this aircraft was really only flown in combat by Polish pilots attached to the French Air Force in the last month or so before France surrendered in mid June of 1940. This section, as in the other two, has a complete rundown of the aircraft used and the pilots to which they were assigned. There are well over a dozen color profiles and other views of these planes as well as a number of photos of these planes that I have never seen before. I wish I had them when doing my Battle Axe kit.

Next is the MS.406. While these planes were far more common, they also had Polish units where the fuselage had the checkerboard roundel. In addition, Polish pilots flew with 'regular' French units. Again, a lot of color profiles, three-view drawings and lots of great photos.

The last type is the Bloch MB.151/152. This is the smallest section as it only covers those planes flown by Polish pilots. No separate Polish unit was set up with these aircraft.

Despite the language barrier, this is an outstanding book and is well worth the investment on the strength of the photos and color profiles alone.

My thanks to Stratus for the review copy.

March 2007

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