Stratus Publications

Polish Wings #8 Poland's Captured Luftwaffe Warprizes

by  Andrzej Morgala, Wojciech Sankowski

Reviewed By  Mike Hinderliter, IPMS #45124

MSRP: £9.99 ($14.42) ISBN: 1-57427-079-6 Softcover, 56 pages (28 in color), 297x210 mm (A4). Website: www.stratusbooks.com.pl Review Sample from Mushroom Model Publications - www.mmpbooks.biz The Book: This book is the latest installment of the Polish Wings series. It covers post World War 2 Poland and what they did to fix up and put back into service the many derelict aircraft that were left abandoned all over their country. Of course the only aircraft that were left were what the Russians decided that they didn't need, what they thought was unserviceable or what they just were unable to find. Needless to say there were no combat aircraft left that could be flown but there were a lot of serviceable utility aircraft and gliders. The Aircraft The book is divided into 3 sections: Combat aircraft Utility aircraft Gliders Section One is the smallest section. It does have a lot of pictures of wreckage and how they looked when the Poles found them. There are also a couple of colored pages that show two Messerschmitt BF109 G-6s, that were restored much later. The caption is dated 2002. Section Two is probably the largest and covers almost every small Luftwaffe utility aircraft you could think of. FW 44, HE 72,FW 58, and the Fi 156 Storch, to name a few. Section Three covers the gliders from the SG 38 to various high performance types. Overall Evaluation I really enjoyed reading this book because it covered a section of history that I really haven't studied very much. It shows what needs to be done following a war and how Poland had to rebuild its civilian and military aircraft. The pictures are very crisp and clear and you can get some nice diorama ideas from them. The color plates are also very good and you could get a very good idea about what you would need to do to reproduce a nice model of one of these aircraft. Another nice feature is that they partnered with Techmod and had the markings for the Fi 156c Storch produced to go along with their color plates. All of the information is there if you wanted to order them. Thanks to Mushroom and Stratus for the review copy and IPMS/USA for the opportunity to study a little-known subject.