Dmitriy Khazanov

A workmanlike accounting of the elite units equipped with this strike aircraft; organizational history with limited color. Though any accounting of Soviet air operations by Russian authors is to be appreciated. I'll admit that the peculiar terminology by which the authors describe the Finnish coastal defense ship "Vainamoinen" and the German flak ship "Niobe" ("coastal defense destroyers"), the intended and the actual targets of a major Soviet air strike, irritates me and is something that should have been quashed by the editors.… (más)

The virtue of this Osprey number is that the authors do a good job of putting into context how this plane didn't live up to expectations; a combination of inadequate command & control arrangements, weak logistics and simple bad timing.

I will note one gaffe that really annoyed me; I'm sorry but the Polikarpov I-153 was not the only biplane fighter with a retractable undercarriage put into series production (see the Grumman naval fighters of the 1930s). As this mistake was on the first page of text it put me off from the start.… (más)