Aircraft Anatomy of World War II

At the Plastic Surgeon’s IPMS contest, held in Des Moines, Iowa last weekend, I won this book in the raffle drawing.

The book comes in soft-cover format of 8¾” x 11¾” page size, and is 256 pages in length. With the aid of 71 extensively detailed and accurate cut-away line drawings “Aircraft Anatomy of World War II” shows how a wide selection of historical aircraft are put together. These line drawings are by a fellow named Weal, who used to do cut-away line drawings for the Air International magazine (of which I used to purchase years ago). Other cutaways are done by Aviagraphica.

Each of these cut-away drawings is annotated with extensive keys that label everything from the nosewheel to the anti-collision lights. The illustrations are complemented by 175 black and white photos and 25 full color ones. There are 53 color paintings of aircraft that span across 2 pages in size. They are huge and really great!! These color artworks cover over 50 aircraft. In each listing, the first pages have the cut-away and specifications on them. This is usually followed by a 2 page wide color painting of the aircraft, but not always. Some are without that and I wish all of the cutaways had the color artwork. 18 of the 71 aircraft mentioned lack the artwork.

This is one great reference of the most prevalent aircraft used by the major combatants in WWII. There are chapters on fighters, ground attack aircraft, bombers, dive bombers, transport, reconnaissance and maritime patrol aircraft. Illustrations have extended captions plus detailed information about each aircraft’s operational specifications.

Highly recommended.

A search of the internet only found one source, in the USA, listing this book. It appears to be the Williamston Library, which is selling a copy for 10 bucks. The book is listed on Amber Books web site in the UK, but no price is listed there. I sent them an e-mail, asking as to the MSRP of the book, several weeks ago, with no response from them.