AMPERSAND PUBLISHING'S "ALLIED-AXIS, THE PHOTO JOURNAL OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR, ISSUE #7"
By Ray Mehlberger
MSRP: $15.95
Hot off the press, from Ampersand, is the 7th in their series of great WWII photo albums. These books are 11" x 8 1/2", soft-cover, and about 1/4" thick. Kind of similar to the layout of Squadron's WALK AROUND books. They are packed with photos, mostly never seen before in print, with captions below the pictures only. So, very easy reading. They are great sources of seeing the detail on armor, and other military vehicles, as the pictures are excellent quality usually.
This new book is 96 pages long. Counting the cover, there are 150 black and white photos in the book.
Chapters are on:
1. "The Pershing tank" With shots of them in Europe, late in WWII, one shot of one on Okinawa, and several shots of Pershings in Korea. This is the longest chapter in the book, and it even includes walk-around photos of a Pershing (in a museum?) and illustrations from an actual maintenance manual. (Great data to help build that new Tamiya M26 Pershing kit...reviewed last month in Internet Modeler).
2. "Japanese Type 94 tankette" This is the shortest chapter, containing only 4 pictures.
3. "Japanese Type 95 tank" This chapter includes some interior shots and walk-around photos of the example on display at Aberdeen Museum in Maryland.
4. "Japanese Type 1 HO-NI 1 S.P.G." Walk-around shots of the example at Aberdeen are included here also.
5. "Panther at the front" This chapter highlights Panther Ausf. As and Ds, including some command versions of them. Zimmerit patterns are shown clearly, as well as how tree branches were used for camouflage. (This chapter will really be helpful when building DML's new Panther Ausf. D kit, also reviewed last month).
6. "German 105cm gun" Great, clear shots of this weapon and its tow vehicle, the 3 ton half-track.The majority of the photos were taken of the Afrika Korps using the weapon in the African Theatre, with a couple more photos of it on the Russian Front.