Mushroom Publications - Romanian Fighter Colors 1941-45

Reviewer: Pablo Bauleo
IPMS: # 46363

Publisher:     Mushroom Model Publications
Title:         Romanian Fighter Colors 1941-1945
        White Series, No 9111
Author    Teodor Liviu Morusanu & Dan Alexandru Melinte
ISBN    978-83-89450-906
     192 Pages, Hardbound, A4 size
MSRP: $59

Review

The Romanian Air Force in World War II saw extensive combat in the Eastern Front against the Soviet Air Force and against the USAAF and RAF in home defense roles. Later, in late 1944 Romania changed sides and saw combat against the Luftwaffe.

This book covers all the fighter aircraft in the Romanian Air Force during World War II. The fighter aircraft inventory included British, German, Polish, and locally designed airplanes, plus captured soviet airplanes, yielding to a rather varied set of camouflage styles. Specifically, the book covers the Hawker Hurricane, Bf 109E and 109G, He 112, Bf 110G, PZL 11 and PZL 24, IAR 80/81, plus captured Mig-3, I-16 and Fw-190A/F.

The book has chapters for each aircraft type in detail, including a brief history of the aircraft service in the Romanian Air Force before moving into a section on camouflage and markings for the given aircraft being depicted in the chapter. This section also includes information on lettering, numbers and factory logos applied to each aircraft.

After the section on camouflage styles and markings, the main feature of each chapter follows: numerous and gorgeous color profiles (sometime even 3-view or 4-views) of different aircrafts, next to a historical picture of the airplane, which in some cases is in color, but in most cases is in black and white.

Finally the book has a few appendixes covering details on Romanian Air Force ranks, paints and colors used in the aircrafts (including color code and FS equivalent) and a very detailed section on the evolution of the Romanian Air Force markings, including both Axis and Allied markings.

I've truly enjoyed reading this book. The information provided on it makes it very valuable to the modeler and several of the pictures have not been published before.

I know that I will add more Romanian models to my collection now that I have what could be the definite reference on the Romanian Fighters in World War II.

I would like to thank Mushroom Model Publications for the review sample.