| US Navy PBY Catalina units of the Atlantic war
by Ragnar J Ragnarsson
Osprey
ISBN : 1-84176-910-X
Price : 15 €
Aerial anti-submarine operations in the Atlantic during WW II
did not make it to the headlines very often. Slow and lone marauders over the
vast unlimited range of the ocean in search for less than a needle in a
haystack from the Arctic to the equator, the PBYs squadrons of the US Navy were the most successful
flying-boat units engaged in the search and destruction of German
U-Booten. Quite an amazing result when one thinks that almost obsolete
when they entered the world conflict, the PBYs ultimately came out the
#1 patrol aircraft victor in May 1945, with a total of 19 Axis submarines sunk in the
Atlantic Ocean. A well-known Icelandic historian — famous for having
initiated a few years back the recovery of the sole existing Northrop
N-3PB floatplane sunken in a glacier lake — Ragnar Ragnarsson has
produced here a vivid and well researched account of the PBY/Catalina's
operations in the Atlantic between 1939 and 1945. Included in his work
is the story of the two Free French naval aviation PBY squadrons
(flottilles 6FE and 8FE) who fought alonside the Allies from Agadir,
Morocco. A truly good book with precise photo and fine colour illustrations.
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| Le porte-avions Charles-de-Gaulle
by Jean-Michel Guhl
Éditions SPE
ISBN : 2-912838-27-4
Price : 75 €
France is today the only country outside the USA to possess an
operational naval aviation — the Aéronavale — using as a floating combat platform a nuclear powered aircraft-carrier.
Pending the availability of her second carrier (the 66,000 ton PA2) which is not due to be
commissioned before 2015, the Aéronavale's razor blade remains today the
44,000-ton Charles-de-Gaulle. With its small carrier air group totalling some thirty aircraft: i.e. Rafale and Super-Étendard fighter-bombers as well as two E-2C Hawkeye early-warning airborne radar and control aircraft, the 'CDG' is a potent combat tool described with much details by Jean-Michel Guhl in this lavish and well illustrated 400-page 'brick'. The best book published so far in French on the Charles-de-Gaulle and her 'Groupe Aéronaval'. ≡
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| Le Super Étendard Modernisé - Standard 5
"Cols Bleus"
ISBN : 00101834
Price : 2.40 €
Published earlier this year in 2007, this special issue of the French Navy's official weekly 'Cols Bleus' is of great interest as it describes in very clear fashion the modernisation programme under way to keep France's fleet of Super-Étendards active and sharp for another decade. Still the number one fighter-bomber of the Aéronavale, the 'Super-E' or SEM remains the mainstay of two combat flottilles: 11F and 17F at Landivisiau. It was made world famous 25 years ago when, during the Falklands war, one of Argentine's Super-Étendards sunk the British frigate HMS Sheffiled using an Exocet sea-skimming missile. ≡
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