Luftwaffe in Colour: The Victory Years: 1939–1942

This isn't by any means a history of the Luftwaffe. It is an interesting color photo album with beautiful photos of many interesting German WWII aircraft and personalities. I loved the photos of German pre-WWII biplanes. Several, of Me-109 fighters and Ju-87 Stuka dive bombers, are iconic. The only problem with this book is that it's too short and ends too quickly!

The subject matter and wartime color photographs are very good. Unfortunately, the copy sent to me had pages 19, 20, 21, 22, 89, 90 and 91 missing. It looks like someone has taken a knife or scripto blade and cut them out. Surrounding pages have been partially cut through also. I would really liked to have had a complete and undamaged book.... disappointed!

I enjoyed this very much. Some great photos - not just of aircraft but also of those who flew and maintained them.Worked well on kindle as each photo can be opened and enlarged to allow closer inspection. That said, it wasn't always easy to see all the detail mentioned in the captions.

This book is a must if you model German military equipment. Here you can become an expert on squadron identification and numbers.

Excellent reference for the model builder.

Volune one in this series had an excellent collection of photos, mostly from Signal, that showed the Luftwaffe's early aircraft. This volume has a few good photos, but fewer and the quality is less, perhaps due to the war situation in both cases. I would get this to complete a set, but don't expect to be as impressed as you were with the first volume. If you don't have the first volume, try Luftwaffe in Colour: The Victory Years: 1939–1942 before buying this one.

Great collection of color photos. Superb reference material for the modeler or historian. Get the second book in the series as well. I did.

Excellent color photographs of the early Luftwaffe's history. Great for readers interested in WWII.

WW2 is everything. Tragic beyond measure but also incredibly exciting and interesting. It was also recorded and many of us had grandparents who lived and fought through it, so very real despite being almost impossible to contemplate.The interest in WW2 has not waned at all. If anything I think it has increased with many more books researched with previously unreleased secret documents and of course the benefits of technology being able to restore photographs and even colour them.And colour is important because it takes what is almost pre-history and turns it into something modern and understandable. There are many people today taking old B&W photos and colouring them to incredible effect.This book isn't that, though. This book prints photographs taken in colour which, was a rarity in Nazi Germany because of the materials shortage. It is therefore 100% authentic and as real as one could get.What strikes me reading the book - which is mainly confined to a short description of each photograph - is the almost normality of it all. There in front of me are photographs of normal people, equipment, Nazi's, planes and the other accoutrements of war as if it were yesterday. Looking at them it is almost surreal to think that these very same people fought and killed en masse and of course received the same in return.That aside this is a superb book for those of us who like to model aircraft. It's often hard to get actual detail information and having the actual source pictures helps enormously. In particular it shows machinery in their used, operational state which adds yet more authenticity and especially useful for 'weathering' techniques.Overall this is simply a fascinating book from whichever direction you approach it. Interesting for interests sake and as a reference book, excellent.

Must have if you're Luftwaffe geek. I am not, not my mainstream, but... book is absolutely fantastic.

In the age of the internet it's hard to think about buying books like these as there is an endless amount of images in any given topic. But let me tell you that this book, and its followup, i fantastic and it is a must have for an airplane modeller and history buffs alike.The images in it aren't just reference material, but they give an insight of the everyday life of the German pilot with great detail.

and often touchingly personal. Lots of fabulous detail for aero modellers of all kinds. A real pleasure to browse through.

Please read review for From Glory to Defeat: 1942-45 - save me a lot of time repeating myself!!!!