Customer Reviews

Flying Aces: Aviation Art of World War II

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FLYING ACES Aviation Art of World War II

73 paintings

Bailey, Cohen. DeNardo, Dietz, Ferris, Grinnell, Laurier, Machat, Stokes, Taylor, Trudgian

This item is said to be published in December 1999, but its around already...

Some of the good news

- a new aviation art title out just in time for the holidays

- bright colorful reproductions of a bunch of air combat scenes

- fairly accurate paintings

- accurate text

- large format

- a nice mix of artists

(could have just as easily been a monograph but instead they spread it around a bit)

-nice paper

-price is not bad

-nice dust jacket art

-and the dust jacket painting is included in the book

The only Bad News: The LAYOUT-- it screams for justice. On a big book like this, the layout editors ran 2.5 to 5 inches of virtually every painting across the gutter. Some casualties in my copy included the nose and prop from a Stan Stokes P-40 and resulted in a single engine P-38 by Robert Taylor...

Not all hardcover books compromise the the art, some examples of how it might be done are the Wooton, Taylor, Young, Trudgian books by David & Charles or Vanwell, or Howell Press Aviation: A History through Art

This layout really bothers me, and the practice generally bothers the artists even more. Even if someone gave me three excellent reasons why its done, it would still bother me.

It is a pretty book, and some of this artwork isn't available in book form any where else.

J. Campbell Martin Tehachapi, California

This book offers a good sample of paintings of famous aces or famous squadrons from a variety of artists. Some aces that are included are: Johnnie Johnson, Galland, Bader, Marseille, Hartmann, Boyington, Flying Tigers etc etc. Also included are some lesser known French, Italian and even Finnish aces. There are excellent brief narratives about the history of each subject to compliment the pictures. The styles of each artist soon become apparent and my preference is for the realism portrayed in Taylor's art work. Overall I think this book is good value for the price, especially if you have an interest in WW2 aviation.

A heavy, colorful and easy read of aviation art prints. Be advised that you will have to endure 18 works of the cartoony art of Stan Stokes and 3 of Mike Machat. Also repeats of the same subject matter: 2 on the Yamato shoot-down, 2 Russel Islands air fights, 2 Me-109Fs in North Africa, 2 Marianas Turkey Shoot, 4 AVG, and there are 4 repeats of the over introductory art. We are treated to some fine work by Taylor, Trudigan, and Grinnell. And we could have done with more of Cohen, Dietz, Ferris. The repeats and Stokes brings this volume down to a two.