Time certainly flies in the modelling world! It might be hard to believe, but it's now almost eight years since Valiant Wings published their excellent Airframe Album study of the Bristol Beaufighter that is now out of print. Of course the option was there to simply release a second edition but, instead of that, Richard Franks has taken the opportunity to add a wealth of new material, extending the book by some 100 pages, and publish it as a new volume in his Airframe & Miniature series.

The resulting soft-bound book, The Bristol Beaufighter - A Complete Guide to Bristol's Hard-hitting Twin, now has 264 pages, printed on high quality glossy stock, and presents a mix of both historical and modelling-focussed material. It is liberally illustrated with period and modern photos, plus a mix of line and isometric monochrome artwork and colour profiles.

As usual, things kick off with a Preface, which isn't listed in the contents, but is actually a well written and very useful overview of the development and service career of the Beaufighter. Over the course of 37 pages the author describes all the major marks from the prototype onwards, and then covers the operational career of the aircraft with the RAF and FAA along with overseas air forces. There's a handy list of Beaufighter squadrons with a short history for each along with their identification codes, and a look at the aircraft's postwar career and an account of the various efforts to preserve examples of this important aircraft for posterity.

Finally, this section lists the various Beaufighter production batches and their allotted serial numbers, which will make it much easier to pinpoint a particular airframe from a period photo.

The book's main chapters begin with Evolution - actually four chapters in one - spread over 36 pages and providing a detailed look at the development of the Beaufighter. Each variant from the prototypes onwards is covered separately, with a concise description and side view artwork by Wojciech Sankowski, plus numerous well-chosen original B&W photos.

The section forms an excellent ready-reference for identifying any particular Beaufighter, and all the common versions are explained - plus a few oddballs, such as Griffon-powered test airframes and the experimental turret-armed nightfighter prototypes.

Camouflage & Markings does a fine job of explaining the numerous colour schemes sported by the Beaufighter at home and overseas during its long and varied career. The chapter is brought to life with excellent colour profiles and plan views by Richard Caruana, and there are a several pages of vintage photos of nose and tail art. A point to note throughout the book is that the period photos - often not "official" and of varying quality - are very well reproduced to allow the maximum detail to be visible. There are also a number of period colour photos that have been carefully colour-balanced to provide as true a glimpse of the original hues as possible.

Modellers will find the inclusion of two pages of stencil-placement diagrams particularly useful, along with the dimensions for British national markings and serial numbers.

The conclusion of Camouflage & Markings marks the end of the nominally historical part of the book and the start of the modelling section - although, of course, most readers will dip and dive into both lots of material.

The modelling-focussed content begins with Bristol Beaufighter Kits - an 11-page spread of reviews of commonly available modern kits at the time of printing, followed by a brief round-up of more vintage releases. The chapter is very useful in the way it breaks down each review into sections (i.e. fuselage, wings etc.), so you can tell at a glance how accurate or otherwise a kit is and how much work will be needed to rectify anything.   

A really handy inclusion in this chapter is a scale-conversion chart for the major dimensions of various Beaufighter marks into millimetres in 1:144, 1:72, 1:48 and 1:32.

Building a Selection has the same two builds as the original Airframe Album publication - Airfix's 1:72 Beaufighter TF Mk X by Libor Jekl, and Revell's 1:48 kit of the same version by Steve Evans. Both are excellent builds, presented with step-by-step and painting guides and useful photos of every stage. While it would have been nice to see a couple of fresh builds, these ones provide plenty of inspiration to tackle a Beaufighter, whatever your preferred scale - and as a final bonus to get your creative juices flowing, there's a page of shots of a pair of Steve's modified Tamiya 1:48 kits, one of them as a fast courier aircraft in a striking "what if" BOAC scheme.

Building a Collection spans 29 pages and takes a similar approach to the earlier Evolution chapters by covering each variant separately, the difference being that this time they are illustrated with isometric views by Chris Sandham-Bailey and Wojciech Sankowski and occasional period photos. The drawings are annotated to point out the distinguishing features of each mark of the Beaufighter, making them handy as visual quick-references for modellers, but I've always felt that the two sections could be usefully combined, because I'll inevitably want to refer back to the Evolution descriptions, and I imagine pure aviation enthusiasts will be equally interested in the Building a Collection content.

It's a minor criticism, though - what's important is that the book contains all the info you need to make sure you get the details correct for building a Beaufighter, whatever the variant.

The largest section of the book is also the one that arguably most readers will think is most important. In Detail occupies a whopping 77 pages and presents a wonderfully detailed "walk around" of the Beaufighter by combining new colour photos of restored aircraft with vintage photos and a mass of illustrations from original pilot's and servicing manuals. This approach is ideal for me, because the vintage material is not only guaranteed to be accurate, but it often shows details that are otherwise hidden unless you're lucky enough to be able to photograph a disassembled airframe.

The depth of coverage is really impressive, making this an absolute goldmine of information for anyone wanting to add extra detail to a standard kit. The material is broken down into the following sections, each often further subdivided to make it easy to navigate to whatever aspect of the Beaufighter that you're interested in:

 Fuselage

Undercarriage

Tail

Wings

Engine, Cowlings & Propeller

Armament

Oil, Fuel, Coolants and Hydraulic Systems

Electrical Equipment

Miscellaneous Equipment

Overall, In Detail will be an absolute "must" if you're undertaking a Beaufighter build as a major project, because pretty much anything I can imagine needing details of is covered here.

Wrapping up the books content is a series of Appendices, with useful lists of the Beaufighter kits, accessories, decals and books that have appeared over the years. And, finally, there's a set of fold-out 1:48 scale drawings of the main Beaufighter variants. To get the maximum use of them and avoid accidents on the workbench, you'll really need to carefully cut them free from the binding, so it's a shame that they're not printed as a separate sheet in a folder at the back of the book. However, that would inevitably have increased the cost of the book, so spending a couple of minutes cutting them loose is a small price to pay.

Conclusion

The Airframe & Miniature series is designed to appeal to modellers and aircraft enthusiasts alike, and this revised and expanded study of the Beaufighter is no exception. Obviously, there's a large degree of crossover between the nominally historical and modelling sections of the book, and can foresee each set of readers dipping into both sets of material, with the outstanding In Detail "walk around" chapter bridging the gap between the two genres and for many people being worth the cover price all on its own. Certainly, if you're planning to build a Beaufighter and want to superdetail it, you'll probably struggle to find a more detailed combination of reference material under one cover. Highly recommended.

Many thanks to Valiant Wings for providing the sample copy for review.

Airframe & Miniature AM26 - The Bristol Beaufighter - ISBN: 978-1-912932-46-7 - is available now from Valiant Wings - Price: £29.45 + P&P

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