World War II American War Eagles, 1937-1942: America's Arsenal of Democracy, Vol. 1

Warren Bodie - God bless 'im - was the last independent author-publisher in the world. His Widewing Publications was responsible for a series of marvelous full-color books on WWII warbirds. WWII AMERICAN WAR EAGLES, 1937-1942, published in 2001, is a 192-page paean to classic Army Air Corps and Navy aircraft of the pre-war/early-war period. As with all Bodie's books, it's a first-rate effort with gorgeous color throughout. WWII AMERICAN WAR EAGLES is basically Bodie's personal, opinionated, idiosyncratic, photo-illustrated history of America and the aviation industry in the years 1937-1942. The book consists on just three chapters! The chapters - "Life with a Sleeping Giant, 1939-1941;" "A Day of Infamy - Then Unleashing the Arsenal" and "Churning, Burning and Learning" - start out with a brief two-three page introductory essay and then plunge into page after page of gorgeous, extensively-captioned Kodachrome photos of just about every warbird and many civilian craft that flew in that time-period. Many of the photos are full-page. So what awaits the reader? Here's a sampling: BT-9s, P-36s, F2Fs, F4Fs, XF5Fs, A-36s, A-35s, P-51s, P-39s, A-17s, B-23s, P2Ys, N3Ns, XP-46s, B-25s, OS2Us, F2As, TBFs, AT-10s, XF4Us, VS-44s, N-1Ms, SBDs, DB-7s, B-17s and on and on and on. Page after page; over 210 shots and all wonderfully reproduced! In short, another great buy from Widewing Publications! Whether you agree with everything Bodie says in his captions, you'll love the technicolor tribute to so many legendary American aircraft. At $39.95, you can't go wrong. Highly recommended. **** Bodie was one of the two authors responsible for the "WWII in color" upheaval that took place some years ago. Before Bodie and the late and much-missed Jeff Ethell began searching for and turning up scads of WWII color photographs, almost all WWII imagery had been black and white. Having uncovered so many photo treasures, Bodie and Ethell together and alone produced many fine full-color WWII books, almost all aviation-related, with other authors following in their footsteps.