OK, so I've got a copy and here are my 2c /sorry about the novel, I typed as I went through the book
:
1st impression,
Wow, this is a big book with lots of photographs. I haven’t got a chance to read it yet, so will not comment on this one - and I don’t feel like I am the one to comment on the written history anyway.
2nd impression,
Those colour profiles are a big let down. They are too small, inaccurate /Hector, Hurricane, Hind I still don't know if the top and bottom view of the Lysander belongs to the side profiles as they don't match/ and generally oversimplified and scattered all over the place and simply not up to today’s standards.
3rd impression,
Nice general interest publication which left me with very mixed feelings.
It reminds me of an episode which happened to me a while ago. I’ve been invited for a dinner, I’ve been promised a big plates full of tasty food. I can eat a lot and I do enjoy my food, so I was getting ready for at least five course meal and I was really looking forward to it.
The dinner itself wasn’t five course, in fact the dinner ended with, what I thought, is a second starter. The food wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t what I expected to be after all those promises and anticipation.
Basically, with this book we’ve been promised steak and we’ve got sausage. It fills me alrite, but leaves me with certain feeling of starvation. I need something more than this…
There are some nice pictures, which I have never seen before, but they are tooooo small, so for me, as a modeller, not so useful and even though I wouldn’t be too impressed with Donal McCaron’s storytelling, I thing that Wings over Ireland or IAC Celebrates 100yrs of Flight give me more inspiration.
Surprisingly quality of photographs of the newer aircraft is not good at all and I am disappointed here. For example rear cockpit of the PC9 is missing, but fair enough, there’s a picture of the front one.
History of IAC, in my opinion, is traceable, researchable and interesting, but not so easy to squeeze into book of 270 pages and priced at 35 Euro, thought it'll be twice as much.
From the other hand this book has 270 pages and some of them are just empty 22, 23, 88 or repeating the same information, profiles on115 and117 or just filling the book, 93, 97… Although I am glad to see a Donald Duck nose art on the Battle.
I know that it’s very hard to compare this book with some other publications, but I have to do it. Classic Publications have a line dealing with WWII Luftwaffe colours and units. For example, LW bomber units are spread into 4 books of around 180 pages each. Nice photographs, nice 3D colour profiles. Not many, but quality of those is incomparable to those I have found in IAC Illustrated Guide
In relation to published books about IAC some people would say that anything is better than nothing, some people would say that better nothing than anything. I would say, that thanks for this book and hopefully there will be another book or books which would finally satisfy my hunger to know more about the aircrafts and markings of the Irish Air Corps.
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