review of the latest Aviation Duel title Fw190 Sturmböcke vs B17

FalkeEins

.. My discounted copy of this new 'Duel' title arrived today, £9.99, much more like it in terms of price. The Osprey 'preview' image from this volume depicting JG 300 pilots Loos & Dahl boring in on the 303rd BG over Bitburg, 15 Aug 44 has been posted on a number of sites and my 11-year old thinks its pretty decent - I have to agree this type of computer-art beats the usual dreary battle scene 'painting' in these titles even if the Fw 190's are too close together and the rear B-17 gunner wouldn't be firing a stream of tracer. Whether I can actually persuade my son to read any of the text will be another matter altogether. There seems to be rather more words here than in previous 'Duel' titles starting with a chronology that curiously ends on 2 December 1944. The themes of FW 190 as 'bomber killer' over Germany are explored but this is no chronological account - that would be to repeat the Elite title. Elsewhere the B-17 is given some nice graphic artwork illustrating the various fighting compartments and there are some personal accounts of coming under fire from German fighters. Bizarrely the text goes on to discuss the Sonderkommando Elbe ramming Bf 109s of April 1945. There is no detail at all on the huge bomber battles that took place over Germany during late December 1944 and early January 1945.
Some of the text I've read seems curiously to focus on Walther Dahl of JG 300 - there are several pictures of him and a full page profile. While acknowledging that his autobiography was 'colourful' the book repeats all the old chestnuts regarding his supposed 128 victories and his huge accumulation of bomber kills - for which the authors of the two volume JG 300 history quoted in this books bibliography found little or no evidence of course.
..There is no chronological account of the Fw 190 as 'bomber killer' just the timeline ending on 2 December as already mentioned. That has to be a typo, and should read 24 December, which was the date of IV.(Sturm)/JG3's last big success in the West. Otherwise the book itself is a very selective look at various aspects of the daylight bombing campaign focusing on training, the machines, the men. Nothing to do with the author I doubt but this is a title assembled to fit a tightly outlined format and as such doesn't work very well at all for me.

Report offensive material