The Bristol Blenheim was one of the most popular British aircraft at the beginning of World War II. It was a very versatile and modifiable machine, and therefore typical bomber, reconnaissance, and fighter (including night) versions were created. The first mass-produced version was the Mk I, which featured a richly glazed nose part of the fuselage. The most common version in the air force of several countries was the Mk IV, in which the glass nose of the aircraft was extended so that the bombardier could lie freely in a special cradle during targeting. The nose of the fuselage had an asymmetrical “dent” on the left side of the fuselage (in its upper part), providing better visibility for the pilot sitting in a separate cockpit. This version also had more powerful engines and a longer range, but slightly lower speed and ceiling.

The Fiat G.55 Centauro fighter was designed by Giuseppe Gabrielli at the Fiat factory in 1942 and flown in the spring of the same year (April 30). The plane was to be a response to the demand for an interceptor capable of operating at high altitudes, which was dictated by the increasing intensity of Allied air raids on Italian cities and military infrastructure. A total of 130 copies of this machine were produced. Most Fiats G.55 were stationed in bases in northern Italy, from which they defended industrial plants located in these regions. The G.55 fighters were very highly rated by the pilots who considered them superior to the German Bf 109s G and K versions, and the Focke-Wulf Fw 190A. Unfortunately, due to the bombing of Fiat factories and problems with the supply of a sufficient number of Daimler Benz 603 engines, the production of the aircraft was stopped. Published in Kagero’s renowned Top Drawings series for modellers and military historians, this volume details the history of the Fiat G.55 Centauro fighter and includes 10 quality colour profiles and drawings in scale.

La-7 Soviet single-engine, single-seat fighter aircraft of the World War II period. Developed in the design bureau of S. A. Lavochkin as a successor to the Ła-5FN aircraft. The La-7 was a development of the La-5 design. Both the sizes and shapes of the two aircraft models differed slightly. This extensively illustrated volume in the Kagero Monographs series details the history of the Lavochkin La-7, and includes 165 archival photos, 10 colour profiles, and drawings in scale. It is ideal for modellers and aviation and military historians.

The Lockheed F-104 was one of the most popular supersonic aircraft in history, although it did not gain recognition in its home country, the United States. Nevertheless, it was used and modernised in fifteen countries around the world. It was the first combat plane to exceed the speed of two Machs, and the first to use the six-barrel M61 Vulcan cannon for combat. The Korean War showed that the US Air Force did not have much advantage in the air over machines from the USSR, especially when it comes to fighter aviation. The Soviet MiG-15 was certainly not inferior to the F-86. In addition, there was mass production in the USSR, where state budget constraints were not taken into account. In this situation, it was necessary to gain a qualitative advantage, and a huge one at that. It was supposed to be given by the F-104 fighter. It was a relatively simple plane with a long fuselage and short and thin wings. The plane was supposed to be as fast as possible to use the combat method: chase, hit, run. The attack was to be carried out with the use of missiles. In 1953, Lockheed received a contract to build prototypes, and three years later – on April 2, 1956 – pilot Joe Ozier, flying YF-104A (serial No. 55-2955), achieved twice the speed of sound.

The Kriegsmarine battleships, were in fact only four vessels, introduced during 1935–1941. The first two, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, were ready before the war and two others, Bismarck and Tirpitz, were commissioned into the fleet after it had begun. That was the biggest achievement in the arming of the German navy conducted by Hitler. Interestingly, all these ships served just a few months, from February to May 1941. In the meantime, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were stationed in Brest, France; Bismarck was getting ready for raids on the Atlantic; and Tirpitz was finishing her sea trials and getting ready for commissioning. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had already been through a baptism of fire, which ended with a little victory on the British sea routes. However, staying on the French coast, they constantly were under the threat of air-strikes. The career of Bismarck ended with her sinking though she had successfully attacked British convoys beforehand. As the consequence of that defeat, the German network of sources on the Atlantic was destroyed. From that moment, raids by heavy German battleships became almost impossible to carry out, and they suffered from the ever-expanding control of the Atlantic by the Allies. Despite this, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau escaped to Germany via the English Channel. This extensively illustrated volume captures the detail of these two Kriegsmarine battleships.

Seventy years after the battle of Kursk, which was probably the greatest tank battle of the Second World War and perhaps of all military history, comes this new publication. Characterized by hundreds of period photos, allowing the reader to relive those tragic and terrible events.The photos of men, weapons, and vehicles taken on the battlefield before, during, and after the engagements during the rare moments of rest are a true testament to military history. An exceptional photographic documentation, which will be useful to historians, military history students and modeling enthusiasts.Some photos are already known, but we have made every effort to include wherever possible new material as well, previously unpublished, coming from the principal public and private archives, to try to offer our readers a new editorial product.The course of operations was analyzed mainly from the point of view of the Das Reich division, taking the information directly from German war diaries and from Otto Weidinger's previous historical researches on the same division. In the text, however, there is no lack of references to other formations of the SS-Panzer-Korps, whose units always acted in collaboration during the course of the offensive

The Russian missile cruiser 'Moskva', until 1995 called 'Slava', was the first unit of a very interesting type of ship of the project 1164, characterized by, inter alia, 16 anti-ship missile launchers set inclined in the bow section. Project 1164 missile cruisers, which, apart from 'Moskva', also include 'Varyag' (ex-'Red Ukraine'), 'Marshal Ustinov' (ex-'Admiral Lobov') and 'Ukraine' (ex-'Komsomolets', ex-'Fleet Admiral Lobov'), when they entered service, were considered to be among the best in their class. They had enormous firepower, and thanks to their technologically advanced missiles, they were called 'aircraft carrier killers', due to their primary purpose, which was to destroy American aircraft carriers. 'Moskva' gained its notoriety thanks to the spectacular sinking which took place during the hostilities during the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. After she fired on Snake Island on February 24, whose personnel refused to lay down their arms, on April 13, 2022, she was hit by two anti-ship missiles. At that time, approximately 60 nautical miles south of Odessa, the cruiser was badly damaged. A fire broke out and ammunition exploded.

Douglas DB-7 is a family of American bomber and night fighter aircraft manufactured by the Douglas Aircraft Company, used during World War II. This book presents a description of working on a model Douglas A-20G Havoc (DB-7). Complete with 80 colour photographs, 35 archival images, 24 renders, and free decals, this is the ideal guide for model-makers and enthusiasts. The author shows, step-by-step, each element of the modeling workshop.

La-5 - Soviet single-engine single-seat fighter from World War II. The plane was developed in the S.A. design office. Lavochkin as a development version and successor of the LaGG-3, a wooden low wing with an in-line engine. It was one of the best fighter planes of the Soviet aviation and the first to compete on an equal footing with the German Messerschmitt Bf 109.

The book presents color profiles of selected tanks fighting on the Eastern Front, both on the Soviet and German sides. The book with a decal sheet. Republic P-47 Thunderbolt is a single-seat fighter and fighter-jet aircraft. Produced in 15,683 units, it was the most numerous of the US fighter aircraft.

Nakajima K-43 Hayabusa, code-named Oscar by the Allies, was the Imperial Japanese Army’s equivalent of the Zero fighter in service with the Imperial Navy. In combat units the machine replaced the aging Ki-27. Manufactured in large numbers, the fighter remained in frontline service until the end of the war. By the time its final version entered production, the development of its successor – the Ki-84 – had already started. The Ki-43 was a very maneuverable machine, but in many areas it was inferior to its adversaries. Despite its fragile design, poor armament and almost no armored protection, the Ki-43 was well-liked by the Japanese pilots and it became a symbol of the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service. Hayabusa was the pinnacle of the Japanese fighter design development until the lessons learned in the Pacific laid the ground for new approaches to the construction of tactical aircraft.

The British Airship Carrier HMS Furious is one of the most unusual units of the Second World War. The ship was designed during the previous conflict as a „great light cruiser” with 457mm guns, but far-reaching changes were made during construction. Furious entered service in June 1917 as aircraft cruiser with a large aircraft deck in the bow and a single turret with a gun of the mentioned caliber in the stern. Thus, Furious made history as one of the precursors of British on-board aviation, becoming a floating platform for various types of trials and tests with airplanes. It quickly turned out that aircraft deck took up the entire bow part and is insufficient to meet the needs of the day-to-day expanding on-board aviation. Therefore, after carrying out only a few patrols on the waters of the North Sea, the ship was returned to the shipyard in the same year, where it underwent further reconstruction. This time, the aft tower and mast were removed and in their place was built another hangar with an aircraft deck, which was connected to the bow with special platforms running on the sides of the preserved superstructures. Since then, Furious was already a powerful aircraft, unfortunately not very successful considering the superstructure with a chimney that occupies the entire amidships, which apart from obviously taking up space, caused air turbulences induced by the huge dimensions and warm exhaust gases coming from the chimney. However, this did not prevent Furious from becoming the hero of the historical event, which was on-board aviation first strike on land targets, which took place on July 19, 1918. The target of the attack was the German Zeppelin base in Tondern, and it was carried out using Sopwith Camel planes taking off from the deck of Furious.

Yubari, the smallest of Japanese cruisers built after World War I, was in fact an experimental design. The ship was intended as a test bed for new technologies to be employed in the construction of the future Furutaka class heavy cruisers. The ship’s lead designer Fujimoto Kikuo, working under the supervision of the Imperial Navy’s chief naval architect Hiraga Yuzuru, set out to create a fast and heavily armed cruiser with the lightest displacement possible. What emerged was a vessel capable of the same speed, range and broadside weight as those of 5,500 ton ships, but with a significantly lower displacement. The construction of the cruiser was initially authorized under the 1917 8-4 Fleet Program, but funding wasn’t available until the launch of the 1921 8-6 Fleet Program, where the ship was listed under the name Ayase. The blueprints were formally approved in October 1921 and on December 23, 1921 the ship was renamed Yubari – a reference to the river Yubarigawa in Hokkaido. Sea trials of the cruiser confirmed her expected sea keeping characteristics, but also showed she was overweight – not an uncommon feature for Japanese designs. After she had been completed, Yubari’s normal displacement (with a 25 percent fuel reserve) was 419 tons (14 percent) above the design figures. This had a detrimental effect on the ship’s speed. During a one-mile run carried out on July 5, 1923 Yubari (displacing 3,463 tons) reached the top speed of 34.786 kt with the machinery producing 61,336 hp at 409.87 rpm. With 75 percent of fuel on board, the cruiser’s draft increased by 61 cm, which increased drag and resulted in the drop of speed below the expected 35.5 kt.

The I-200 fighter project was a compromise between design office’s capabilities, realities of the Soviet aviation industry, with its available technologies, and military requirements. According to the brief description of the MiG-3 from 1941, it was, in terms of its purpose, an interceptor, but, interestingly, it could also be used as… an attack aircraft, or a light, fast dive bomber. Both the I-200 prototypes and the later MiG-1 and MiG-3 were single-seat, single-engine, mixed-design low-wing aircraft. Front part of the fuselage, together with the centre wing, up to the rear wall of the pilot’s cockpit, was made of metal. Only the tail part of the fuselage and wing consoles were wooden. Vertical stabilizer, which was an integral part of the fuselage, was made of wood, too, but horizontal stabilizer was all-metal. Rudders and ailerons had a metal construction and canvas cover. Undercarriage was made of chromansil steel.In front part of the fuselage there was a pilot’s cabin with a seat, instrument panel and controls, front fuel tank, main offensive armament, water cooler and other componentry. Centre wing was attached to the front part of the fuselage at seven points, the rear part at four points, while the engine mount was supported by two.

The French battleship, Jean Bart, together with its twin Richelieu, was among the largest and most modern ships of this class that served in the Marine Nationale. Their construction was based on the experience gained during the construction of Dunkerque battleships – smaller and less armed units – but quite modern for their times. A characteristic feature of the aforementioned ships, including the Jean Bart, was the unusual layout of the main artillery concentrated in two four-barrel turrets located in the fore part, while medium calibre artillery was located in the stern. This, in combination with the massive body of the command tower and the chimney 'hidden' in the rest of the superstructures, created an astonishing silhouette of a beautiful and very dangerous ship. Jean Bart was built at the Ateliers et Chantiers de Saint-Nazarie (Penhoët) shipyard in Saint-Nazarie. The keel was laid on December 12, 1936. The ship was launched on March 6, 1940.

The Dornier Do 335A did not meet all the Luftwaffe requirements. First, the cockpit armor was too weak, which excluded the machine from the role of a fighter intercepting heavily defended Allied bombers. Therefore, in the summer of 1944, a modified version of the Do 335 - marked with the letter “B”- was developed. The main difference was to be an armored pilot’s cockpit with a new, easier to manufacture windscreen. The front wheel had larger tire. To be able to retract it without any changes in the landing gear bay construction, it was rotated around the leg axis by 45° during the retraction. The rest of the equipment and weapons were to be the same as in the case of the Do 335A-1. The developed version was designated Do 335B-1, but it was quickly abandoned in favor of heavily armed versions B-2 and B-3, known as Zerstörer. The prototypes of the version B-2 were Do 335M-13 and M-14 powered, like the A-1, by the DB 603E (front) and DB-603QE (rear) engines, but with significantly reinforced armament. The 15 mm MG 151/15 cannons above the engine were replaced with a 20 mm MG 151/20, and the wings were fitted with two 30 mm MK 103 cannons with 70 rounds per barrel. The same cannon fired through the propeller axis.