Customer Reviews

North American Aviation P-51 Mustang (Osprey Production Line to Frontline 1)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A book for WWII aircraft and modeling enthusiasts. Great little softcover which starts with the circumstances and people leading into the design, developement and prototype testing of the P-51, argueably the most successfull allied fighter plane of that war. Not a page without a top quality black and white photograph or funky color prints of war propaganda posters. Lots of close up shots of technical details as well as factory layouts, assembly line photographs, windtunnel testing info, and gossip on the people involved in this machine's inseption. Well balanced writing, mixing engineering info, historical snaps and human anecdote, ending in a short chapter featuring a number of fighter aces who flew the Mustang.Made for three satisfying evenings of reading. Give us more Michael O'Leary!

It's too bad this book is out of print and costs so much, but it is quite a nice addition to your P-51 library, if you can afford it. True to it's name, the book has lots of photos and back-story on the development and production of this incredible aircraft...most, if not all of which, I personally have never seen before, in all of the books I've ever read on the P-51.

The printing quality and paper are excellent, as are the photo selections. This isn't necessarily a close-up detailing book for the modeller or tech.-head, it's more of a documentary style chronicle of how it was built, and how it was used.

My ONLY gripe (and the reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5), is the egregious number of typos! For such a fine book, from a respected publisher, it seems remarkable that the Editor didn't handle their spell-checking a little bit better!

But that aside, buy it if you can. I got mine for about $45 by being patient and waiting for the right time to make my purchase. It's about $25 more than it sold for new, but it was worth it, considering how hard it is to locate one anymore.