Military Model Scene
Robin Buckland's
British Naval Weapons of WW2 vol 1...
...The John Lambert Collection, Destroyer Weapons, from Seaforth Publishing
Title: British Naval Weapons of WW2 Vol 1: Destroyer Weapons
Author: John Lambert & Norman Friedman
Publisher: Seaforth Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-5267-4767-9
This is a book very much with the modeller in mind, while the Naval historian will also find it fascinating. This is only volume 1 of set which revolves around a series of stunning scale drawings created by John Lambert, who sadly passed away back in 2016. John had drawn a lot of plans over the years (over 800 pages apparently) and was a regular contributor to a number of hobby magazine, such as Scale Models and Model Boats. Following his passing, his collection of drawings have been acquired by Seaforth Publishing and they have been sorting them out and have added some equally fine Introduction notes from well know US Naval historian, Norman Friedman.
The 240-page hardback book starts off with the background to John Lambert and his work, and explaining how they have managed to transfer his work into a suitable format for publishing in the book , and without losing important detail in the central gutter between each double page spreads. Following that we have pages of introduction to the topic, background and a fine selection of wartime archive images. These all lead into the simply superb, annotated drawings created by John Lambert, who was clearly fascinated by his subject and whose attention to detail, especially on the open gun mounts, is ideal for warship modellers to get the knowledge and the detailed information to get the detail on their model(s) just right.
The equipment featured in this book is particularly associated with British Destroyers and is broken down into sections covering Ships: Guns: Automatic Weapons: Gun Fire Control: and Torpedoes: Mine Warfare and Other Weapons. There are way too many to even attempt to list everything that is included, but it varies from 4 and 4.7in Gun Mountings, 2 pounder pom-pom variants, the 40mm Bofors in both single and twin mountings, Torpedo tubes and much more.
Those enthusiasts who are skilled in scale drawings for aircraft, AFVs and ships are all so valuable to our hobbies. I know of others who have passed away and this drawing collection are left with an uncertain future, or left to museums where they can be left in their libraries and only found by the lucky few. So I can only applaud that Seaforth have not just acquired them, but are publishing the collection to be shared and enjoyed with the many. Simply first class and I can't wait to see what comes with volume 2.
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Thanks to Pen and Sword for this review copy.
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Robin