This latest edition of Valiant Wing's Airframe Album series covers an aircraft that is the first purpose built jet bomber, the Ar-234. Initially developed with a simple skid landing gear to save weight, it was later decided that this may not be the best way to do things so the fuselage was enlarged for standard landing gear. The aircraft's gestation period was not as long as one might think, such was the requirements during war time and despite problematic engines which had a 25 hour life span, it proved to be an excellent reconnaissance platform as nothing the Allies had could catch it. It was also more widely used as a bomber than many would think, though its successes were relatively minimal due to a number of factors, mostly having to do with loss of air superiority and heavy anti-aircraft defenses.

Several were captured intact after the war and most of the Allied nations had at least one they used for testing and the get a good idea of how advanced German engineering was at the time. Sadly, most of these planes were scrapped, but one survived and was completely rebuilt by the Smithsonian Institution to wartime condition.

The Airframe Album seris concentrates more on the details of the subject than it does on the history, yet this volume contains a considerable amount of background information on the aircraft. Thanks the the plethora of prototypes and variants, we get a pretty complete look at all the variations on the theme, including four engine versions, making this the first four engine jet. Eventually the war situation put a stop to some pretty interesting developements, all of which are covered in this edition.

Thanks to the availability of an excellent restoration, we have a superb detail section. Of course, there are also a lot of period images and sections from the tech manuals as well. We then have several pages of full color profiles as well as a large section showing the differences between the variants built and planned. This is followed by two build articles of a 1/72 Dragon kit and one in 1/48 by Hasegawa. A full listing of kits, accessories and decals is also included as is the norm with this series, along with a goodly list of books that have been published.

This all makes for an excellent reference for both modelers and enthusiasts alike. Highly recommended, as frankly, are all the books in this series.

April 2016

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