[GuerraCivil]

I have some doubts of the accuracy of colourplates in Osprey books - they are not as perfect references as they should be for a serious modeller. Some disturbing findings in this area:

The French Aces of World War Two (Ketley) - one colourplate features a Hawk 75 A-1 but represents a plane with six guns (four on the wings) making it later A-series (well, if one reads well the text of the book one will be aware of this inconsistency). I had also some trouble to distinguish the colours of French planes in the book - the colours are very dark and it is very difficult to see any differences of colour areas as almost everything on upper surfaces appears to be dark blue/very dark blue. Not much help for a modeller how tries to figure out something about the camo pattern.

From the same book the colourplate representing the Hawk 75 of Georges Lemare flown in late 1941 over Dakar raised some doubts as the exactly very same plane is represented with very same markings in one photo as having full "1942 Vichy colours" according to text below. So is it from 1941 or 1942?

Fokker D XXI Aces of World War 2 (Stenman - De Jong) - the colourplate featuring FR-76 of Finnish Air Force is incorrect: there was not radio mast and antenna wiring in this plane (AFAIK). It seems that they chose to represent a "standard" colourplate of Finnish Winter War Fokker D XXI instead of offering more accurate picture. I have a great respect for Kari Stenman (the author of Finnish Air Force section of the book) so I wonder how this passed through the editing. Maybe it was considered "cost-efficient" to use just a "standard colourplate" of Finnish Fokker D XXI Mercury Series instead of making more accurate representation of FR-76?

Aces of Legion Condor (Forsyth) - the colourplate of Bf 109 A/B number "6-15" has incorrect propeller - a "standard" variation of Bf 109 B is represented with Hamilton propeller when the plane had actually Schwarz propeller (IIRC, one can see that difference when comparing the colourplate to a actual photo of "6-15" represented in the book).

Spanish Republican Aces (Permuy Lopez) - there is a colourplate of I-16 type 10 dated to "January 1938" - however as far as I know the I-16 type 10´s were not used in Spain during that period but the first I-16´s of type 10 arrived to Spain in April 1938.

The biggest complain that I have against Osprey books is that newer editions of Aircraft of Aces seem to neglect totally the bibliography section ("to save pages"). This is not against authors - they certainly would have provided it but I think that Osprey format has become just too tight to have such "extra weight" as bibliography or source references.

There certainly are differences of the quality of Osprey books depending on the author, but I would not blame totally the author of all possible inaccurancies and mistakes - many simple errors could have been corrected easily by any competent proof-reader. I believe that some savings have been made in edition work and proof reading by Osprey to reach "cost-efficient format" - some authors (specially non-English/American) would clearly have needed some back-up from professional edition team and good proof-reader to make a better book. Unfortunately Osprey is not the only publisher to make savings in editing work/proof reading in the name of "cost-efficiency". I wonder if that is cost-efficient policy in the long run because the fame of publisher or published series will suffer and this may turn some readers away.

However I have found some Osprey books good and others at least satisfactory - for example the French Aces (criticized above) was in my opinion quite good and interesting introduction to the French fighter pilots of WW2 and it did let appetite to know more about French Air Force and French ace pilots in WW2.

When done well, the Osprey books are great introduction to various themes of airwar history (specially those neglected in standard WW2 books). If they just would allow the bibliography included in the format, the interested reader would be given valuable hints how to move forward to other sources from a good introduction.