Classic Publications

Luftwaffe Colours: Volume 3 Section 2

Jagdwaffe: Barbarossa, Invasion of Russia

June - December 1941

by Eric Mombeek, Christer Bergstrom with Martin Pegg

Luftwaffe Colours: Volume 3 Section 3

Jagdwaffe: War Over The Desert

June 1940 - June 1942

By J. Richard Smith and Martin Pegg

Reviewed By Stephen Tontoni, #34961

I have decided to review both of these books at the same time; they are from the same series of Bf109 references and of the same quality and format.  Both are soft cover, 9"X12", black and white with color profiles.  Both feature high quality profiles of Bf109's (when does one say Me109 and when does one say Bf109?) in service in North Africa and in Russia respectively.  In addition to the excellent profiles, there are a number of very interesting and unusual photographs of these machines.  There are extremely few photos of anything else in either book.  Only in the Barbarossa book is there a profile of anything but a Bf109, which is a solitary profile of a Bucher Jungmann.  Otherwise, both books are homage to the Messerschmitt 109.

In addition to the colorful profiles, there is text to tell the story of these theaters. Since the time frames are limited, they do not tell the entire story of either. I'm sure that those will come out in later volumes. I found the map in the beginning of each book to be very helpful in reading the text. I found myself going back and forth to the map as place names came up in later pages.

There are relatively few photos that would be useful for many detail modelers; this is an extravaganza for the modelers who really enjoys the final markings. Some of the schemes would be extremely challenging to airbrush.

The most interesting parts of each book, however, were the personal recollections of the pilots. Unfortunately there was only one recollection from an allied pilot and none from any Russian pilots. It seemed there was a German recollection every few pages.

All in all, I would say that for the Bf109 or Me109 aficionado, these books would be wonderful additions to your collections. They would not be terribly helpful to the detail modeler but could add a lot of spice to the choice of markings for those 109's. They would also not tell the story of the entire campaigns as the time frames are delimited.

My thanks to Ian Allan Publishing and Specialty Press for providing these wonderful books for review.

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