MMP Books seems to be on a campaign to provide camo and markings enthusiasts with a nice line of quality books on those air arms or subjects that have not been all that well covered. Bulgaria is definitely one of those whose aircraft camouflage schemes have been only sparsely covered.

Bulgaria was partnered with Austria-Hungary and Germany in WWI and so was under the same draconian international rules right after the war. This meant no air force, though there was limited civilian flying. It wasn't until a few years after Germany started its military build up that Bulgaria began looking to rebuild its air force. One of the places that it was able to get arms at all was from Germany so it is quite understandable that most of the aircraft that eventually got into service were from that source.

These aircraft were mostly new build planes, though they were also able to obtain a number of ex-Czech types when the need to fill squadrons became critical. Interestingly, official RLM shades were not allowed for export in the early years of Bulgaria's air force acquisitions so equivalents were painted on their planes and later supplied (Bulgaria having no local paint manufacturers for these sorts of planes).

This initial volume covers aircraft acquisition in order of receipt and so it stops at Bf-109E. It not only covers fighters but fighter trainers as well, such as the FW-56. Even those types where only one was acquired are covered, as long as they were included in the inventory. Bulgaria also had several changes of its national insignia during these years and all of that is covered as well. It is fairly obvious that the author had done an incredible amount of research and of course, no author does it all himself so he does provide credit where it is due.

Typical of this series there are superb and quite large photographs of not only planes but some of the luminaries. Though not all planes saw combat, when they did, those combats are included in the book, so you get a war history in addition to a look at the planes and their markings. There is an incredible amount of information included in here and that is what makes it such a great book. This is not one of your weekend read, but an interesting and informative reference that all who are interested in the subject need to have in their collection.

September 2019