The Complete Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Spitfire (Complete Illustrated Encyclopd): The History of Britain's Most Iconic Aircraft of World War II, in Over 250 Photographs

The Complete Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Spitfire by Nigel Cawthorne is neither complete nor encyclopaedic and suffers from numerous inaccuracies. There are some good illustrations (especially less commonly used images of factories and engines). But overall it is a shoddy book. You’re much better off buying Spitfire: The Legend Lives On by Dibbs and Holmes.I have a large library on Second World War aircraft and the Battle of Britain and wanted to add this new volume to my collection. However, before doing so, I should have looked more closely at the main front cover photo (what is that miniature aircraft?) and the authors own biography on Amazon (what is all that stuff about what girlfriends think of his flat and where he goes drinking?).The book is smaller than you expect from an encyclopedia (22x16cm). It is packed with photos, many of them well presented. All books on the theme rehash some of the same old images but this effort does have less commonly seen photographs, especially of factories and engines. But some are inappropriate. (Seriously, what is that mini fighter on the front cover? And why does the section on Spitfire construction start with a photo of a Messerschmitt?)The text is more erratic. First of all, the presentation is bizarre. Whoever copy edited the book got in a real mess with the fonts: some text is extra large and some extra small (almost illegible)! As for content, the layout is not very logical. Starting with pilot quotes from the BoB and then going back to the Spitfire’s design is odd and overall the whole narrative is disjointed. Most of the overly long section on Vickers Armstrong has little to do with Spitfires. I’d have preferred instead a longer, more detailed and better structured section on Variants – surely an encyclopedia of Spitfires needs to be very detailed in describing the different Spitfires.My biggest gripe though is with accuracy. There are errors even in the first few pages which make you question the later text. For example:Page 7: Winston Churchill’s speech about “the Few” was made on 20 August 1940, not on 18 June.Page 24: A photo described as “aircrews of the Battle of Britain” has RAF personnel standing in front of a Spitfire with a four-bladed propeller; such variants didn’t exist in 1940.Page 35: Group Captain Sailor Malan is said to have been “the highest scoring Spitfire pilot in the Battle of Britain.” Whilst he is undoubtedly a hero who made an impressive tally of kills throughout his career, he was not the top Spitfire ace of the BoB (that was Eric Lock).Overall the book comes across as shoddy, poorly conceived and hurriedly put together – presumably with the aim of cashing in on the 75th anniversary of the BoB in 2015.If you want a true encyclopedia of the iconic British fighter, you would be advised to buy Spitfire: The Legend Lives On by John Dibbs and Tony Holmes.

Main photo on the cover is a sub-scale replica, why? There are many superb Spitfire images which could have been used. Contains a small amount of interesting stuff but a lot of the text and photo captions are stilted and awkwardly written. The book appears to have been written/edited by someone who loves Spitfires but doesn't know much about them, reads a bit like a rushed O level project.

Much smaller book than I thought it would be and not as detailed as I had hoped. It was bought as part of a friend's 90th Birthday present who used to fly Spitfires and the book seemed totally inadequate so I had to spend more on other items to go with it. This book is suited to maybe a teenager or someone who has a passing interest in Spitfires but not for the connoisseur!

Great product, really good value for money. Great size for children and adults. I have just purchased a 2nd book. I would recommend this product to others.

A nive book to glance through!

The best aircraft magazine I have ever read. Complete, well laid out and just wish other magazines/books would look and learn. BRILLIANT!!

Zero stars wanted, but not operational in this web page, one star is too much.Amazon writes: "We have determined that no change needs to be made to the product image you have specified. However, if you are the rightsholder for this product, please visit www.amazon.co.uk/images to find instructions for providing a replacement image."This is in response to a non Spitfire half scale kit plane on the cover of the book. This sucks!Søren Klokhøj

My husband finds this book and the Lancaster Bomber book very informative. He keeps reading things out to me.