For whatever reason, I missed this particular book from Valiant Wings when it was released in December. But Valiant Wings has kindly sent a copy of it for review. This edition of Airframe Extra is focused on the Battle of Taranto.

Perhaps a bit of background is appropriate. When France fell in 1940, it was feared that the French Navy, mostly based either in Toulon or in Morocco, would be taken over by either the Italians or the Germans. Britain's presence in the Mediterranean was tenuous as best and so it was imperative that this fleet be neutralized in some way. Britain offered to allow the fleet to either come over to the British side or leave for the French West Indies or America. None of those options was taken so the British proceeded to attack and sink as many French warships as it could. This, of course, left a very angry French, but it did take care of the situation.

The next was dealing with the Italian fleet. Italy had some of the finest warships around in 1940 and were more than a match for the British. The only way that the British could see doing anything about it was to attack it in its main base in Toranto. A seaborne attack would be suicide thanks to all the defenses, so an aerial attack was the only real way. Not only that, but the attack needed to be at night as the Italians had no radar and so the British could more easily sneak up on them.

The result of this attack was successful but not as easy at it would seem. It did, however, give the Japanese some ideas and some of what was learned by this event was put into play at Pearl Harbor a yearl later.

In Airframe Edition #4 we get a superb mix of history, complete with some great photos, a set of profiles of the aircraft that took part in the event and the preliminaries as well as full kit reviews. As is usual with the kit reviews, there are builds in both 1/72 and 1/48, these articles being written by the same two builders that Valiant Wings has been using for quite some time. As usual, one builder loads up their builds with as much aftermarket as he can find while the other builds pretty well out of the box. The builds for this edition are the Italeri 1/72 CANT Z.501, Azur/Special Hobby 1/72 Martin Maryland, Airfix 1/72 Swordfish, MPM 1/48 Fulmar I, and Italeri 1/48 CR.42.

In all, it makes for an excellent read and provides inspiration for those who might want to model some of the aircraft that were part of this event in history.

July 2016

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For more on Valiant Wings, including getting this book, visit www.valiant-wings.co.uk. Thank you for the review copy.

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