Introduction

This book covering the Focke-Wulf Fw 200 the Luftwaffe’s Long Range Maritime Bomber is part of a series of titles from Frontline Books as part of their ‘Air War Archive’ series. These books cover the subject matter mostly in photographs and so offer a great visual reference for anyone interested in the subject matter regardless of the reason for that interest. For the modeller these books represent a cornucopia when it comes to visual information.

Review

This offering from Frontline Books is part of the ‘Air War Archive’ series. This series of books are soft backed offerings having a good card cover with a very good spine to the book that keeps the contents in good order. This book covering the Focke-Wulf Fw 200 the Luftwaffe’s Long Range Maritime Bomber has been authored by Chris Goss who has written a huge number of titles for this Frontline Books series covering German aircraft of World War 2. The contents of this title are provided over 156 pages of good quality semi gloss paper.

The contents are presented in the following sections:
Introduction
Glossary and Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Part 1 – 1939 - 1940
Part 2 - 1941
Part 3 - 1942 - 1943
Part 4 – 1944 - 1945

This offering from Frontline Books is very similar in presentation to the Images of War series from Pen and Sword. This book is very light on text and heavy on photographs, in my opinion I have to say overly light. The introduction did provide an answer to a question I had, which is why did the Germans not use this aircraft during the Battle of Britain? Well it seems that two Condors were lost very close together (5 Days) in 1940 and Focke-Wulf could only manufacture three aircraft a month. Moving on the aircraft had a good deal of success laying mines and bombing missions against surface vessels.

The rest of the book is pure photography and captions which is what I mean by very light on text; I suppose it depends what you are looking for from a title like this if you agree or not. Looking through the images supplied I was pleased with what is on offer. Most of the photographs are I believe taken by the average Hans and so provide visual reference that is natural and as it was rather than staged for telling the German public how they wanted it to be. Due to the nature of the photographs they are not all perfect, but I like that about them. What these photographs do show is the wonderful lines the Condor had; a bit like a Dakota that has been stretched out and given extra engines. The images taken from the cockpit in flight and of aircraft in flight clearly shows this aircraft at its best.

Conclusion

With models available in 1/72nd and 1/48th scale this offering from Frontline Books covering the Focke-Wulf Fw 200 the Luftwaffe’s Long Range Maritime Bomber will be a big plus for getting the intricacies of the aircraft right. The photographs hold a lot of appeal to me due to the un-staged nature of them and I hope will prove to have the same appeal for all viewers. I will say that I think the text is too light in this title as I feel that at the very least a short introduction to each chapter was needed and would have added to the books appeal.