PMMS

bookSherman Ic Firefly
History & Model 1

By Wojciech J. Gawrych
Rossagraph Publishing, Warsaw

Review by John Harris


I picked up this new title at last weekend's "War & Peace". The second line of the title neatly sums up the book. The book is very well produced on nice quality paper, a fair cry from earlier East European books.

The first 16 pages of this A4 soft-covered book are devoted to the history and development of the Sherman Ic, well illustrated with bi-lingual text (Polish / English) and perhaps more useful, bi-lingual captioning of the many photos. Also included are drawings of the vehicle and stowage diagrams. The following section, Pages 17 to 25, covers the 'Sherman Fireflies of the Polish Armed Forces', again with Polish / English text, and a nice selection of photos. The text covers deployment of the vehicles, the colours and markings and again more drawings.

The second section Pages 26 to 72 covers modelling the Sherman Ic Firefly, and unfortunately this is where the book falls down, as the text is only in Polish, however there are plenty of useful and clear photos of Polish Sherman Ic in action and in depots in the UK. There are lot of detail pictures of the vehicles (which are both Vc) at the Axvall Museum in Sweden and the Brussels Museum. The pictures illustrate the common features of the IC and Vc. There are 1/35th drawings of the 'typical' stowage box and radio boc.

The text references various update sets, but as my knowledge of Polish is limited this acts as a frustration to the English reader. The excellent photos of the model hints that quite a few update sets were used to produce a nice model. The book includes some side views illustrating the markings of Polish vehicles.



Page created 28 July 2004

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