Putnam Aeronautical Books

German Aircraft of the Second World War

(Including Helicopters and Missiles) Revised Edition

by Antony Kay and J. Richard Smith

Reviewed By Art Silen, #1708

MSRP: $55.00 USD

Hardbound, 400 pages

German Aircraft of the Second World War (Including Helicopters and Missiles) is a revised and updated work that first appeared in print in 1972.  This is a much earlier work by the same author, Antony Kay, in collaboration with J. Richard Smith, and illustrated by Eddie Creek.  Revised by him in 2002, the book uses the same enlarged format as the Junkers discussed in another review and running 400 pages, including forty pages of Appendices, including listings of all aircraft mentioned in RLM’s Technical Department Typeliste; a listing of all surviving German aircraft and missiles from the Second World War; and a list of German aircraft projects, and index.  Within it are fixed wing aircraft by Arado; Bachem; Blohm u. Voss; Büchner; Deutsches Forschungsinstitut fur Segelflug (DFS) (German Research for Sailplane Flight); Dornier; Fiesler; Focke Wulf; Gotha; Heinkel; Henschel; Horton (flying wing aircraft); Junkers; Klemm (lightplanes); Lippisch (delta-wing aircraft); Messerschmitt; Mistel (mistletoe) composite aircraft; Siebel, and Skoda-Kauba (Czech); rotary-wing aircraft: AEG Helicopter; Doblhoff/WNF (Wiener Neustadt Fabrik, a Messerschmitt subcontractor and Bf 109G assembly plant); Flettner; Focke-Angelis; Focke Wulf Tribflügel (“Thrust-wing”, with ramjets on its rotary wings’ tips); Nagler-Rolz Flugzeugbau (small, low powered, single-seat helicopters); Fixed-wing aircraft projects involving Miniature Fighter Competition (Blohm u. Voss, Heinkel, Junkers); Emergency Fighter Competition (Blohm u. Voss, Heinkel, Junkers, Messerschmitt, and Focke Wulf); ramjet fighters (Heinkel, Lippisch, Skoda-Kauba, and Focke Wulf); rocket powered aircraft (Arado, DFS); bombers (Blohm u. Voss, Focke-Wulf, Henschel, Horton, Junkers, and Messerschmitt); and missiles (Peenemünde (A-series rockets) Electrische Mechanische Werk (EMW), Blohm u. Voss; Fiesler, Henschel, Messerschmitt, Ruhrstahl/Kramer, and Rheinmetal-Borsig).

Like Junkers Aircraft & Engines, German Aircraft of the Second World War contains an enormous amount of information, and is, or certainly should be, an essential reference for modelers and aviation historians.  That having been said, to those seeking to broaden their knowledge and understanding of the wartime German aviation industry will want to read the following additional works:

  1. German Aircraft Industry and Production, 1939 – 1945 by Ferenc A. Vajda and Peter Dancey, (Airlife Publishing, 1998, published in the United States by SAE International);

  2. The First Jet Aircraft, by Wolfgang Wagner  (translated from the German by Don Cox) published in the United States by Schiffer Military / Aviation History, 1998) as part of the series titled, The History of German Aviation;

  3. Willy Messerschmitt: Pioneer of Aviation Design, by Hans J. Ebert, Johann B. Kaiser, and Klaus Peters (translated from the German by Ray J. Theriault and Don Cox), Schiffer Military/Aviation History, 1999;

  4. Bombers and Reconnaissance Aircraft 1935 to the Present, by Roderich Cescotti (translated from the German by Don Johnston), Schiffer Military / Aviation History, 2001;

  5. Kurt Tank: Focke-Wulf’s Designer and Test Pilot, by Wolfgang Wagner (translated from the German by Don Cox), Schiffer Military / Aviation History, 1998, and finally,

  6. German Secret Flight Test Centres to 1945: Johannisthal, Lipetsk, Rechlin, Travemünde-West, by Heinrich Beauvais, Karl Kössler, Max Mayer, and Christoph Regel (translated from the German by Ted Oliver), Midland Publishing, 2002).  These books, and others currently available devoted to individual aircraft types, have made that history accessible.

To conclude, this book is recommended and without exception; is worth owning, even at today’s high prices.  This is an essential reference tool, engaging and informative; modelers, historians, and enthusiasts alike will want them as ready references, and although there is less to guide modelers in recreating described aircraft’s physical detail, they provide even experienced modelers essential context and transition between aircraft of succeeding eras.  Serious modelers cannot hope to understand the aircraft they are depicting fully unless they also bring the history and technologies associated with them to their craft so that the final result becomes an historical era realized in miniature.

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