Hans-Joachim Marseille by James H. Kitchens,III & John R. Beaman, Jr

[PhilippeDM]

Hans-Joachim Marseille
A resource guide to the Aces and their aircraft
The Luftwaffe Ritterkreuzträger 1939-1945
Number 1

Authors James H. Kitchens,III & John R. Beaman, Jr.
Editor: AirPower Publications Chevron Publishing 2007 – 64 pages

Marseille, a name filled with some kind of myth for every Luftwaffe fan. Being an extraordinary pilot and an unconventional soldier in the strict term of the word, participating in air battles in an unconventional theatre, the African skies, his reputation is well established in the community and beyond.

This book is not what you will expect at the first glance: a history of a fighter pilot. It is not the ultimate picture collection covering this pilot’s career: it is a well thought detailed study of all planes related to Marseille’s career, taking into account all the known picture evidence of the treated subject, even mentioning supposed gap filling airplanes.

The book starts after an explanatory (and compulsory) introduction with a short career description of Marseille, including a time line indicating when and which airplane he uses for the given time schedule.

In the second and most important part of the book, each plane is detailed. Profiles based on the available pictures are shown and commented for every Marseille’s plane where possible. A concise description of the plane and his camouflage, including some historical details follows; the next paragraph then catalogues every related photograph and put it on the time line, and takes it in relation to all known (to the authors) published source. Each published profile is also commented and discussed in the same manner. Of course this book includes several (lesser known) pictures to clarify the accompanying text.

The authors do not claim to make the ultimate Marseille’s airplane book and invite us to complete their study with unknown material. Recent postings on this website proved this and can easily been plugged in this study.

The authors mention it themselves: this book is a starting point for historians, modellers or simply interested Luftwaffe fans. Its great advantage is that it collects every known source in one single place and leads you to more extensive lecture/research.

This work is a huge monk work from two experts that you get in your hand… and I enjoyed it very much. While reading, it was my pleasure to (re)discover the books or articles mentioned in my book/magazine collection and to search for the indicated comments. It is also frustrating as, of course, I do not have all mentioned references, but for most pictures different issues are given, so I could find most of them. It also triggered my curiosity and some of the mentioned books are on a high place on my wish list.