Customer Reviews

Soviet Combat Aircraft of the Second World War, Vol. 2: Twin-Engined Fighters, Attack Aircraft and Bombers

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The authors of the two-volume set detailing Soviet combat aircraft of the Second World War exceeded my wildest expectations with this magnificent work.

While not all aircraft projects are described, the authors have wisely selected all major and minor combat types alongside many of the experimental models. They give an easy to ready, yet extremely comprehensive account of the development of each type and various subtypes followed by extremely interesting description of the combat record of the type concerned.

The reader gains a new respect for the Soviet Air Force and aircraft industry by reading these books. A review of the record of the Soviets during the Second World War has been long overdue and these two books represent a superlative addition to the work on the subject.

On of the pleasant surprises of the fall of the iron curtain is that the interest for second world war aviation appeared not to be restricted to the western world. Since then there is a steady flow of books about Russian aviation and aviation on the Russian front, viewed from the Russian side.
Up until the fall of the iron curtain the main source of photographic material about Russian aircraft seemed to come from captured Russian planes flown by Finland, or from a very small collection of the same photographs which were used over and over again by everyone writing about the subject. Not so in this book. There are a few well known photographs, but there is also plenty of new material, new drawings and even new planes compared to older -western- books about the same subject. I was extremely lucky to buy this one second-hand for as little as 27 Euro -who wanted to depart from this book?- but I'm afraid that I'll have to pay the full price for volume two about multi-engined fighter planes, attack aircraft and bombers. Will there be more? A volume of the same quality about Russian flying boats or transport planes would be very welcome.

I saw the book when I bought the first volume, about the fighters and I went ahead and bought this one also. I have got it first, redt it and here is what I can say about it:

1)a very good data-base for pictures and aircrafts performance. Every aircraft is discussed in detail, with photos. At the end of the book you will find a full load of color plates and data tables.

2)the text instead is somehow confusing. Maybe it is the fault of the translator for not catching the original meanings. In one place the author is praising the good defensive armament just to say 2 pages later that the aircraft suffered from poor defensive armament (same aircraft, no difference)
-the west is not very familiar with the eastern front so every book regarding this subject is welcomed and took for granted. Just that a large number are very biased and VERY INACURATE! The author is describing an attack on Ploesti, stating that they've done huge damages and that "the sea was on flames for 3 days"...take an atlas and locate Ploesti...
Stories about bomber victories against fighters given like this: "during trials, the bomber aircrafts downed 10 Meserchmitts"...no location, no timing...just WORDS...

3) The way it was written is also confusing. You can find texts about same aircraft at the begining and also at the end! Not very clear clasification.

4) Not always the information is complete...This book is supposed to be a TECHNICAL one, so GIVE every detail and number regarding the aircraft. Like ammo count, ordnance, flight performance.

CONCLUSION: I bought this book to fill a gap in my WWII collection. I needed a good technical book on VVS airplanes and if you are looking for the same, go for it! Otherwise, as a historical text it suffers a lot, very biased. I suggest instead "Black Cross, Red Star", also a little biased, but much more HISTORICALLY exact.
Again, if you are looking for a historical book, look elsewhere, technical yes...

One of a two volume series (so far). This is a superior book with much information and photos, some of which are new, about WW2 Soviet single engine fighter aircarft. This seems to be well above average in information and is on a par with the Putnam MiG, YAK, and Tupolev books. Highly recommended.

Volume 2 of the set "Soviet Combat Aircraft of WW2" covers the development, use of twin engine fighters, attack aircraft and bombers. Here in the West, we don't know much about the "Great Patriotic War" as the Soviets called WW2. Staggering numbers of people, weapons were involved.

176 pages, only 2 in color describe these planes. There are plenty of black and white photos, charts, line drawings describing these planes. I thought too much time was spent in the IL-2 (Yefim Gordon wrote a whole book on that plane, so a lot of it is duplicated here).

I don't think the current asking price of $60.00 is good - I paid 1/2 of that making it a good addition to my collection. If you have this book, you really have all you need (and is readily available) on Soviet bombers in WW2. I'm glad I bought it, rounds out the library nicely.

The book is really very well done with photos and details of known and relatively unknown Soviet World War 2 aircraft. Much of the content is unavailable in English language texts prior to this. Part of a series (2 todate). Get both!