Andrzej Glass

So long as you keep in mind that this is mostly an informative booklet for model builders, and there is only one other publisher likely to put out a book on the topic, this is an acceptable work. That said, while Kagero's standard of performance has gone up over the years, for a book that came out in 2020 I would expect a somewhat better level of writing, and the author's efforts to make the plane in question look more important than it was are, shall we say, "cute." On the other hand, intertwined in the story of the plane is the story of the Lublin company, and their main designer, Jerzy Rudlicki. Rudlicki is a genuinely interesting character who, escaping the collapse of Poland in 1939, saved the core of the Lublin staff, worked for the French, the British, and ultimately finished his career in the United States with Republic Aircraft.… (mere)

This book details the bombers of both sides of the opening campaign of World War II, the Nazi attack on Poland in September 1939. It illustrates a number of early-war types and variants, and has useful detail views of those early variants that other publications often gloss over in favour of information on these types' later war career (at least, in the case of the Luftwaffe aircraft). There is a lot more information in here that the reader with a command of Polish will benefit from, including a full technical breakdown of the P.37 Los and details of operations on both sides - the Polish section must make rather depressing reading, if the many photographs of aircraft destroyed on the ground are anything to go by, a result of the indecision of the Polish high command; the German section is far more extensive. The simultaneous invasion in the east by Soviet forces is dismissed in half a page, with two small official pictures of Tupolev SB-2s; although this book was published in 1991, old habits must have died hard in terms of not offering criticism of Poland's eastern neighbour.… (mere)