Tupolev SB in Action

This In Action book by Squadron is in their signature 11” x 8 ¼” soft-cover format. It is 50 pages long, has 101 black and white photos, 3 full-color paintings (on the front and rear covers) and 10 color profiles in the center by Squadron’s resident artist Don Greer. These profiles cover the markings of every country that flew SB’s. Finally, there are 35 black and white line drawings of SB variants and details of them (2 of these drawings are 3-views).

The book covers the following SB variants:

• Ant-40-1 (first prototype)
• SB-2-M-100
• SB-E-M-100A
• Avia B-71A
• Avia B-71-b
• SB-2-M-100-A (late)
• SB-2-M-103 (early)
• SB-2-M-103 (late)

It tells the stories of the SB’s in the services of Russia, Spain, Czechoslovakia (the Avia’s), Germany, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Poland, Finland and China.

The SB’s are noted because when they were first introduced into combat in the Spanish Civil War, in 1939, they were so fast that no enemy fighter could catch them.

Interesting items in the book are the descriptions of an attempt to use tricycle landing gear on the SB and the installation of a chemical weapon dispensing pod. Thank goodness that this was not used in combat. I also liked the photos of various areas of the aircraft’s interior.

This book will come in handy for modelers that have the old (now long defunct) Frog brand 1/72 nd scale kit of the SB-2. It will also be of high interest to the WWII aviation armchair historian amongst us