Valiant Wings The Westland Whirlwind

[Mike]

The Westland Whirlwind
Valiant Wings Publishing

With the recent release of a 1:48 kit by Trumpeter, there's renewed interest in this quirky little aircraft, which this book hits just at the right time. The book is written by Richard A Franks, a man with prolific output who must have a monumentally large reference library, with a strapline "A Detailed Guide To The RAF's Twin-Engined Fighter". It has 8 pages (excluding covers) of glossy paper in a softbacked perfect bound portrait format that's around A4 in size. Inside the front cover is the following index:

• Technical Description. Detailed coverage of constructions and equipment.
• Evolution – Prototype, Production and Projected Variants. 3D isometrics illustrating differences between variants.
• Camouflage & Markings. Colour side profiles, notes and photographs.
• Production. Concise history of each airframe built.
• Appendices. Kit list, Accessory List, Decal List, Bibliography.

A preface and introduction to the Whirlwind takes up the first 8 pages, with the next 31 covering the technical description. Evolution takes up another 14 pages, with another 17 pages taken up with camouflage and markings. 7 pages are allocated to the production section with a variable number of lines of text for each one, depending on how interesting its history was. The last three pages are covered with the appendices, and it's nice to see they are so compact, rather than drawn-out to pad out the back of the book. The text of the rest of the book is closely spaced around the numerous photos, diagrams and drawings that are everywhere without being hard to read or appearing cluttered. The aforementioned pictures are of high quality and will be of great interest to the modeller as well as the amateur historian, or just anyone interested in aviation in general and the Whirlwind in particular. The colour profiles in section four are of high quality and are accompanied by notes appropriate to each airframe depicted, helping to answer any questions the reader might have.

Conclusion
This a very accessible book for the modeller or interested reader, and serves up buckets of information that isn't easily available on the web, while not appearing too technical. The Whirlwind has been long overlooked in the history of British early WWII fighters, and it is a welcome sight to see that being remedied in kit form, although no kits are perfect, as well as in print. Well worth a read, and great reference material.

Highly recommended.

Review sample courtesy of

[Stew Dapple]

Thanks Mike, have ordered one

I hope Airfix will be getting a copy for when they re-tool the 1/72 Whirlwind next year

Cheers,

Stew

[Shar2]

It is a very interesting and informative book. Got mine last week at the Salisbury show. I didn't realise there were so many different gun options considered, great for the aftermarket guys.

[Stew Dapple]

I've got the Warpaint and the 4+ books on it, but I don't recall reading much about different guns and layouts - mind you I haven't read them for ages, perhaps I ought to treat them as a warm-up for the new book.

I think if I recall correctly one of the Special Hobby Whirlwinds had a 37mm gun version? Or did I dream it?

Cheers,

Stew

[Procopius]

I think if I recall correctly one of the Special Hobby Whirlwinds had a 37mm gun version? Or did I dream it?

You did not dream it, or possibly you did, in which case you're the Lathe of Heaven and we should all tread lightly.

[Stew Dapple]

You did not dream it, or possibly you did, in which case you're the Lathe of Heaven and we should all tread lightly.

Excellent - I'm off to work on my lucid dreaming then!

p.s. I had to look it up