Ginter Books

Naval Fighters #82: USN/USMC Two-Seat Skyhawks

by Steve Ginter

Reviewed By Bob Ulrich, IPMS #35901

MSRP: $36.95 ISBN: 0-942612-82-5 Review copy courtesy of Ginter Books Website: www.ginterbooks.com This latest Ginter book is nicely timed between the recent Classic Airframes TA-4J and the soon to be released Hasegawa TA-4J. It follows the standard format of the Naval Fighters series, which makes it especially useful to the modeler. The book begins with a short developmental history and a comprehensive listing of TA-4 bureau numbers. This is followed by a section of Tech Order reprints, covering in great detail cockpits, canopies and landing gear. There is also a very useful under wing loading chart. The balance of the 160 pages is devoted to a unit by unit breakdown of two seat Skyhawk operators. Each unit is provided a short operational history and a nice selection of photographs. The photos are all black and white, but crisply reproduced and clearly captioned. It would be great to have color photo coverage, but that would probably make a book this picture intensive prohibitively expensive. The back cover does comprise a selection of twelve color shots. If you are at all familiar with Steve Ginter's publications there are no surprises here (which is not a bad thing). The tech section will be valuable while building whichever kit you choose, and the unit histories make interesting reading. Recommended, to Skyhawk fans and modelers. My thanks to Ginter Books for the review copy.