Osprey books accurate?

[John Beaman]

I agree with Juha.

When I started this weird avocation of ours in the 1950s, there was nothing about the Luftwaffe, per se except I Flew For The Fuhrer! Then came Karl Reis' books which were a true revelation.

The Osprey books are not, indeed, perfect, but the "bang for the buck" is enormous.We "alter hasse" types cannot imagine a book on Chinese Aces, etc., etc., 40 years ago. We owe all the specialists and authors who have worked for years on obscure subjects a gratitude of debt.

As an erstwhile author, I know what chances publishers take on obscure subjects these days. Cut Osprey some slack and be grateful, warts and all!

[Nick Beale]

If you get a good author who has written at greater length on the subject elsewhere then you can be pretty confident that the Osprey will provide a reliable (and cheaper) introduction, I think. Personally, I quite like their house style of design (especially the maps in the Campaign series) but I'd happily lose the paintings of dramatic action scenes.

[Jukka Juutinen]

Nick, regarding language: I would take the English as found on original test reports e.g. on www.aircraftperformance.org any day over current British Oxford English. Or any printed publication of that era. Back then it was e.g. "Mr. Sydney Camm, O.B.E.,...", today an intolerable (worthy of capital punishment) "Mr Sydney Camm OBE..." (correct example taken from a caption in Flight magazine).

I agree with Stig that significant amount of additional text would be possible to be included if the layout eliminated the blank spaces that serve no useful purpose. E.g. the old Profile-series or the classic Aerofax-series are brilliant examples on how to maximize space while maintaining excellent readability.

However, Ospreys´s older aviation-related series - that is Aircraft of the Aces, Combat Aircraft and Aviation Elite Units - are not awful in this respect. However, the new Air Vanguard and the naval titles of the New Vanguard are thus far quite hopeless. The Air Vanguard would be quite OK, if the series followed the idea of e.g. Monogram Close Up -series, i.e. concetrated on design and development, not trying to cover everything.

[FalkeEins]

Originally Posted by John Beaman

Cut Osprey some slack and be grateful, warts and all!

..I said much the same thing here a few years ago ..and got slaughtered ("Perusing this profile is bad for your health!"). At the time I was quite prepared to support John Weal's Luftwaffe efforts, but now much of what he produces is just very dated. And their editors have a terrible problem with the 'capitalisation' of German titles and nouns. But they must be desperate to keep the 'Luftwaffe Aces' going. I see 'Channel Front aces' is next! Very happy to see that Osprey managed to twist some other 'fresher' Luftwaffe authors' arms to get stuff into print (forthcoming Mistel book from Robert Forsyth). But there are still some surprising gaps in their aviation series; ie Normandie Niemen (how about it Chris?) or even JG 300...

[Nick Beale]

Jukka, I truly have no idea what "British Oxford English" is. I am old enough to have received (or suffered) a very traditional and formal education in the language and its grammar and I have no recollection of ever hearing the expression.

Personally, I find the interpolation of full stops into English abbreviations cumbersome except for Mr., Mrs. etc. Evidently you feel differently but that does not reflect contemporary use of the language by native speakers, I'm afraid. You'll also have noticed that (unlike the Germans) we no longer capitalise all nouns, although we used to in the 17th Century, and we now write "today" instead of "to-day" (as was common in the 1930s).

[Jukka Juutinen]

Nick, by "British Oxford English" I mean the English as recommended by that institution. Their examples include "J R R Tolkien" which to me looks with first reading like "Jrrtolkien". To me punctuation of abbreviations adds essential clarity without which the text stalls as the text is just alphabet porridge.

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by Jukka Juutinen

Nick, by "British Oxford English" I mean the English as recommended by that institution.

Having gone to a far better university, I wouldn't trouble myself with what Oxford recommends!

[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.