Valiant Wings has embarked on another book series. This one is called Airframe Detail. It seems as if this series will concentrate on those aircraft which are less well known, or which were not put into full production. The author acknowledges that just about every photograph available on the subject was used in this book, so that gives you some idea of the scope of these books.

As most of you are aware, the BV-141 along with the Ar-198 and FW-189 were all developed around a specification for a battlefield observation aircraft. The requirement was for a single engine aircraft so it is rather interesting that the winner of the contract was the two engine FW-189. The BV-141 was a massive aircraft and probably the reason it was not chosen was not due to its rather unorthodox appearance, though that may well have contributed, but because it was not all that stable an airframe. Because photographing would be part of the mission, you can see how important a stable platform might be.

This book covers the competition as well as the development of the BV-141, and all the information available on the various prototypes and preproduction aircraft. Most of the book is a technical description or a walk-around using extant photos and what has been located of the aircraft's technical manual. This describes everything from the airframe to engine to aircraft systems and weapons. It is followed by a camouflage and markings section. In this section, the consideration that there may have been at least one plane painted in RLM 71/02/65 is refuted as the standard scheme for these planes was RLM 70/71/65. It is thought that those who think, from a few images all taken a ground level and showing only the leading edge of the wing, that it had 02 upper surfaces was due to some bare metal panels. Recall that these planes were prototypes so there were often modifications and crash damage repair. However, one is free to interpret the images as one wishes since there is no overall upper surface or side images of the aircraft in question.

The last section is on modeling. In this one the recent Hobby Boss kit is built and critiqued. A short list of kits is also provided and since there is little in terms of aftermarket bits, it makes for a rather short section.