F-4E/RF-4E Phantom II Book Review
By Fotios Rouch
| Date of Review | July 2009 | Title | F-4E/RF-4E Phantom II |
|---|---|---|---|
| Author | Alexandros Anestis, George Papadimitriou | Publisher | Periscopio Publications |
| Published | 2009 | ISBN | 978-960-6740-75-6 |
| Format | 136 pages, softbound | MSRP (USD) | $44.95 |
Review
The F-4 Phantom with all of its variants has been around for fifty years and has served with at least ten nations and therefore countless books have been written about it. Doing an online bookstore internet search on the subject of the Phantom brings up many hundreds of results even today.
What makes this book so special then?
This book is the most comprehensive (F-4E, RF-4E) photo reference on the Phantom I have seen to date.
Every single photo throughout the book is in color.
The book brakes down the aircraft in its major sections and goes on in detail photographing every component, weapon, cameras, cockpit details and open hatches, showing off all the details that a modeler would ever want and would find indispensable with building their Phantom.
Other books do walkarounds too but I have yet to see such comprehensive explanation about what each photo shows and how each component operates. It is so annoying when I get a book on an aircraft of interest with a bunch of nice photos and no text to tell me anything at all! It is noted that many modelers just read the photo captions and not the straight text inside most modeling books.
The aircraft of greatest interest to me is the HAF F-4E Avionics Upgrade Program (AUP) with its ghost camouflage and this book covers it in great detail.
The authors Anestes and Papadimitriou have also released at an earlier time a similar quality book on the F-104 but sadly it is out of print although it can still be found in some bookstores.
These books are not printed in huge numbers so you might want to order early.
This book is put together in such a manner that it is very much recommended for the lovers of this aircraft and not just for the super detail modeler freaks!
The Anestes/Papadimitriou duo have some other very interesting titles in the works and the readership that has seen into the pattern and core subject matter of their presentations will be able to guess what the future brings!
This title is available from Periscopio Publications (www.periscopio.gr).