Customer Reviews

Hungarian Air Force - Aircraft Specials series (6069)

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George Punka - the Grand Old Man in Hungarian aviation history research - has done it again!

The book - in the usual great squadron/signal quality - gives a superreb overview of Hungarian military aviation from the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy till the very end of WWII.
Due to it's size (64 pages) it will never be "The Bible" of WWII Hungarian Military Aviation, but is still a must in every person's library, who is dealing with the topic.

Starting with a very brief historical time-line of Hungarian history - to set the whole post-WWI situation in perspective - he describes the birth of the Royal Hungarian Air Force in the early 20'es and hereafter examines the RHAF related events of WWII in five chapters: Yugoslavia, Soviet Union, 1942, 1943, and RHAF Over Hungary.
Hereafter he goes over to deal with the different types of planes used by the RHAF. In 8 chapters: Fighter, Bomber, Long-Range Reconnaissance, Short-Range Reconnaissance, Trainer and Liaison, Transport, Captured and Experimental, Mr. Punka manages to touch basically every corner of the RHAF.
Here again he tells the story of each branch of the RHAF, starting with the short Slovak-Hungarian (air)war in 1939, conflict with Roumania in 1940, the Yugoslav campaign in 1941, the Eastern Front and the Home Defence.

Please note: This is not an in-depth work. Hence it does not contain any technical data about the aircraft or detailed organization descriptions.
The main strength of this book are all the B/W(180+) and color(6) pictures, and the - especially interesting for modelers - color drawings (48) of the PLANES and squadron emblems. Further more it also gives the aircraft codes used by the RHAF.

Some of the planes featured in the work: Bf-108 and 109, FW-56, 189 and 190, JU-52, 86, 87 and 88, CR-32 and 42, Re-2000 I and II, Me-210, Bf-110, Ca-97, 101, 310, 135, He-22, 46, 70 and 111, Do-17, 23 and 215, WM 10/13 and 21, Bu-131 and 181, Ar-96, Fi-56, SM-75, PZL P11, Avia B-534, etc., etc.

The previous review tells you what you need to know. Having just purchased this book, I wanted to add a few items of interest. As mentioned, this is an overview of the history of the Hungarian Air Force. It does not go into a lot of detail, however, for those of us that don't have a lot of information regarding Hungary (or the rest of the Balkans) what is there is very interesting and will certainly whet your appetite for more information.

The aircraft coverage isn't detailed yet the photos are very interesting. In particular, there are a good number of photos of aircraft types that are usually only a footnote in most histories. There are numerous (including two color) photos or the Re 2000 Heja fighter, the He 112 fighter, the Ca 135 bomber, and also photos of the He 46 reconnaissance and Fw 58 liaison/training aircraft.

This book serves to fill in some details of WWII that many people don't know they are missing. I do recommend this book.