Specialty Press

Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker

Warbird Tech Series #42

by Yefim Gordon and Peter Davison

Reviewed By Steve Dottavio, #39681

Available through Specialty Press.

Specialty Press has released Volume # 42 in their Warbird Tech Series, the Sukhoi SU-27 Flanker.  Yefim Gordon and Peter Davison team up to give the readers a breakdown, history and development of one of the most recent fighter aircraft in the world.

The book has 104 pages, broken down into nine chapters with an introduction and Appendix A.

• Chapter 1 deals with the concept and early development of the Flanker
• Chapter 2 has all the improvements made from the prototypes.
• Chapter 3 covers the production versions
• Chapter 4 has the making of the nose upgrades of the electronics and thrust vectoring engines.
• Chapter 5 is about the navigation of the Flanker

In between Chapters 5 and 6 is a color picture section.

• Chapter 6 describes what is called the “larger cockpit generation”.  It covers the Flanker’s side by side configuration similar to an F-111.
• Chapter 7 covers the operational Flanker families
• Chapter 8 – “SU-27 under the microscope” with walkaround photographs.
• Chapter 9 deals with the Flankers in Foreign Service and finally…

Appendix A, by longtime IPMS member Richard Marmo, covers some of the Flanker kits that are available out there. 

All in all, the Warbird Tech series are great resources for the modeler and also for the aviation enthusiasts.  I highly recommend this publication.  A special thanks to Karin Hill of Specialty Press and John Noack of IPMS/USA for this review.

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