Jane's Gem Combat Aircraft

Combat Aircraft is a great book.It was one of the first military reference books that I bought.It works great at air shows or just to thumb through it in your spare time(which I like to do).It fits nicely in your pocket and still has the quality of the big books.If you want to look up a bomber,helecopter,or a fighter this is a real handy book.

This is a handy reference to have when reading tales of aviation adventure in WW2. The book itself is small, smaller than those yellow 'used-car value' books, and because of its lack of size it doesn't go into the variants of any particular airplane. What you get is 3 paragraphs of text about a plane, a photograph so you can visualize the plane, and a list of technical specifications such as engine, armament, rate of climb, etc. On the upside, just about every airplane is listed, including those used in the Spanish Civil War. On the downside, you don't get too much depth about each airplane's sub-variants. I feel that if they had made the book itself a bit larger, Jane's would have been able to include a lot more material. Still, there's enough information there to make you feel comfortable with the airplane type and allows you to understand whatever passage you were reading in the WW2 story that prompted you to refer back to this book in the first place.

This is a great book for the person that loves aircraft but doesn't want to carry around a ten pound book. It has a picture of every aircraft it describes. There is two full pages dedicated to each aircraft. All in all it is nice and handy book to have around.