[Jukka Juutinen]

1. The case of battleship vs. battleship. First, why should one need to find "find some illustrator willing to draw you some technical stuff about guns, aiming devices etc" when excellent illustrations exist in original manuals, patent drawings and factory drawings? In most cases these technical illustrations are much more informative than modern simplified art. In case of aircraft, another excellent sources are are period professional journals like Aircraft Production. No need to pay prime sums for eye candy.

2. And where did I supposedly suggest that "if you want a book for ten Euros quid that contain hundreds of drawings, hundreds of pictures, thousand and thousands of words, new eye witness accounts never published before etc."? Rarely one can read a sentence so ridden with horse manure. I suggested that useless comic book style art be replaced with more informative illustrations from e.g. original official manuals and that the text be increased by optimizing the layout. Although increased word count might increase costs a bit (if authors are paid per word) while the reduction in those commissioned comic book drawings would compensate for that. Again, no need to "be prepared to put some hard earned dinero down".

3. Just look for the old Profile booklet on Concorde. It has only 42 pages in basically same format as Osprey's. And it is a prime example that an excellent basic reference that puts many 200+ page big books to shame can be done within very limited space through optimal layout and thorough prioritizing.