Schiffer Publishing Ltd
Douglas B-18 Bolo
The Ultimate Look: from Drawing Board to U-Boat Hunter
by  William Wolf
Reviewed By  John Ratzenberger, IPMS# 40196

[book cover image]

Format: Hardcover, 8-1/2""x11"", 216 pages, glossy.
Contents: over 260 photos (color && b/w), bibliography, index.
ISBN: 0764325816
MSRP: $59.95
Available from Schiffer Books: www.schifferbooks.com.

Here's what the Schiffer website promo says:
William Wolf brings his meticulous research to describe the little known Douglas B-18 Bolo which was America's most numerous front line bomber at the time of Pearl Harbor. Over the years the story of the airliner turned bomber has languished in obscurity and the few articles on the subject in popular aviation magazines have emphasized its faults and maligned it as a budget bomber that had few virtues. Wolf's comprehensive book is the first ever on the subject and gives the reader the definitive description and appraisal of this neglected bomber's development, testing, manufacture, the aircraft per se, and combat experience.
In the Acknowledgements, the author states "I have always intended to write a book on the B-18..." but he never says exactly why. I can only assume it has something to do with his association with the Pima Air & Space Museum, which has a restored B-18. By the time I finished I still had no idea why one would put this much effort into what is, in fact, an obscure, low-production, budget bomber with an uninteresting and unspectacular career.

The first three chapters are the most interesting of the book and I really enjoyed them. They cover Donald Douglas and Douglas Aircraft, civil aviation in the US, the DC-series airliners, pre-war American bomber development and procurement, and the development of the B-18 itself. But at the end, you understand that the only reason the B-18 ever existed was the crash of the Boeing 299 and that the USAAC was forced to get something to fill the gap while the favored B-17 program could be put back on track.

Up to this point, the book is pretty much chronologically organized - it now shifts to a subject organization, and suffers for it.

Chapter 4, the description of the B-18, at 43 pages, is the second largest of the book, but comes across as nothing more than a manufacturer's or USAAC manual re-written in the past tense - i.e., "There were six windows in the compartment to give the gunner full vision." It is amply illustrated with original and restoration photos, but just plain boring.

The rest of the book addresses the B-18 in service in CONUS (Chap 5), Hawaii (Chap 6), Philipines (Chap 7), Alaska (Chap 8), Anti-submarine Warfare (Chap 9), and Canada/Foreign service (Chap 10). Following this is a chapter on the B-23 Dragon (Chap 11) and then finally the bottom-line - disposition and obscurity (Chap 12).

Within these, Chapter 9, at 55 pages, is the largest of the book. It discusses U-boats, ASW weapons, detection, tactics, patrols, operations on the East Coast, West Coast, Caribbean, etc, etc - there are about 40 topics in the chapter. Unfortunately most these topics start somewhere around 1940/41 and run to 1942/43, then the next topic does the same and so on ... for 50-some pages. Given that the surrounding chapters did the same thing, I spent hours going back and forth, back and forth, seeing the same events happening over and over. It does not help that there is only one type/font for topic headings and the same is used for sub-headings. In short, this would have made much better reading if an effort had been made to do a chronological history with excursions to cover various subjects within. In my opinion it would have shortened and tightened the book considerably.

There are editorial and proofreading errors. I found umlaut-O's between words in several places in the text. The Table of Contents mislabels Appendix A as B, and leaves out the real B. In the fingernails on the chalkboard award category, the word "mute" was used for "moot" in at least two places, one in a bold heading.

Too many of the picture captions repeat, exactly or closely, something in the text. It is my preference for pictures/captions that supplement, not repeat, the text.

Having said all that, there are some good points. There is a tremendous amount of research and detail in here, covering a range of subjects/topics in which the B-18 is featured but isn't a star. If you have interest in pre and early war USAAC/AAF organization and operations, anti-submarine operations, etc, then this book contains information that is probably of use. The fact is, the B-18 is very much a parenthetical note within all the other information. There is an index and an extensive bibliography.

But at the end, at $60, I cannot recommend this to other than to the most devoted fan, historian, or modeler.

I would like to thank Schiffer Publishing and IPMS for providing the review sample.


About the Reviewer: John Ratzenberger is a member of, and Webmaster for, the Eastern Carolina Plastic Modelers of New Bern, NC (www.ecpmod.com), not to mention being the IPMS Associate Webmaster for Reviews.

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