Back to the Allies with this latest book in the series, with bomber, strafer, night fighter and reconnaissance variants spread across 28 chapters. They include US bombardment groups and individual squadrons, along with USMC, RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) and NEIAF (Netherlands East Indies Air Force) plus a few miscellaneous aircraft. At the heart of it are a series of 111 colour artwork profiles, illustrating aircraft from all of the units featured in the book. You get basic background of each unit, and detailed individual captions for each of the aircraft profiles. The aircraft include the glazed nose bomber and reconnaissance versions, along with the solid nosed strafer types. The bulk of the aircraft are in simple Olive Drab upper surfaces, and Light Grey undersides. There are a few exceptions, such as black night fighters, bare-metal finish and US Navy Blue schemes of the USMC aircraft. What will attract many readers will, I think, be the variety of very colourful nose art worn by a number of the units. For example the Purple Bats on the noses of the 499th Bombardment Squadron, Tiger heads for the 823rd Bombardment Squadron, Black Panthers of the 822nd BS and the Green Dragons of the 405th BS and plenty more. The other element to throw into the mix are the many archive photos spread throughout the book, which help illustrate the detail in the text.
As ever in this series, there is clearly such a lot of research gone into piecing together all the detail you will find in this one, coupled with the archive photos and the great collection of colour artwork profiles. Good for the aviation historians interested in the Pacific War, while for modellers there is a lot of inspiration to work on a series of model B-25 Mitchells, devoted to this Pacific theatre of operations. Another good addition to this book series, and easy to recommend for modellers especially.

Military Model Scene