PBY Catalina in Action (Squadron Signal 10232)

PBY Catalina in Action (Squadron Signal 10232)

This is a good book, probably priceless if you are tackling the Airfix or Academy 1/72 scale kits, but I have to agree with a lot of the three star reviews for this title in that it is a bit heavy on model by model information and fairly lacking on any sort of "in action" squadron history. Older "In Action" books would typically start each section off with a few paragraphs of history, and most of the writers would pack these paragraphs full of history that richly added to the reputation of the series. The more recent Squadron "in Action" tomes seem to have moved to a strict pictorial history through photo and caption. That's wonderful if the captions are super informative, but some of the captions in this title left a bit to be desired. It was also a bit heavy on "walk around" series pics, not a bad thing, but it's not a "walk around" series book.

While the writing was in need of some boost here, the photos are rather good, particularly the war time color photography. Model builders will be thrilled with the Consolidated archive photos of technical bits like the bow turret and landing gear on the -5A variants.