I’m not going to get into the usual full review on this book because to be quite honest I don’t think it really rates it. I find a lot of this series of books to be light on substance and this one in particular seems to completely miss the mark.
I say that because it is entitled “German Medium FlaK” but it then goes onto say on the first page “20mm to 88mm FlaK”, and while the 8.8cm FlaK guns weren’t as heavy as the 10.5cm or 12.8cm guns they were hardly medium, and the 2cm guns were right at the opposite extreme. If these are medium FlaK then what does the author consider light ?
And there-in lies the problem, because the vast majority of this book is devoted to the 2cm FlaK 30, FlaK 38 and Flakveirling 38, with a half dozen photos of vehicle mounted 8.8cm, a few more of the 151/20 Flakzwilling ( again a lightweight FlaK piece ) and less than 10% of the photos included covering the guns that actually WERE medium Flak, the 3.7cm and 5cm guns. Though ironically the only photo of a 5cm FlaK 41 is misidentified as a 3.7cm FlaK.
Which brings me to another failing, several photos are misidentified, and those that are identified as 3.7cm guns aren’t described as anything more than that, with no mention of whether or not they are the FlaK 37 or the FlaK 43. The mistakes that you pick up make you query the accuracy of the rest of the photo descriptions as they are not hard ones to identify. It screams of a cobbled together collection backed by no real research.
This DOES have quite a good collection of photos of the 2cm FlaK 30 and FlaK 38, but I would consider them to be just that, a collection of photos. In other words photos which you could in most cases find online yourself but that are together in a convenient format. Really these photos should have just been included in the “German 20mm FlaK in World War II 1935-1945″ book by the same author and publisher. At least then they would have had one worthwhile book instead of two pieces of fluff.
So as a photo collection reference source for something quick and easy to have to hand on the 2cm guns then this is fine, but as serious research material it completely misses the mark.
Author : Werner Muller Publisher : Sch.iffer Publishing Pages : 48 containing B&W photos and line drawings Binding : Softcover Size : 210mm x 282mm ISBN : 9780887403514 .
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