.
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by Chris Goss.
Hardback (7.1×9.9 inches). 236 pages. 2025.
Subtitle: From Bomber to Nightfighter
If you ever wanted a pictorial of the Dornier DO-217, here’s your book. The upgrade to the original DO-17 “Flying Pencil” bomber extended its capabilities through a number of variants, eventually being converted into a nightfighter.
The book contains 288 black and white photos of the plane from all angles, although Photoshopping seems minimal judging by the number of dark photos and occasional blurry ones. I would’ve liked to see more effort at pixel lightening and sharpening. The book also contains 20 black and white illustrations.
Fortunately, when you have so many photos, plenty showcase various attributes that should please modelers. The photos are organized by year, so you can trace the variants and changes that occurred as WWII continued.
There’s not a lot of text except for the captions. Indeed, quite often each page will contain one photo, a one-sentence caption, and 40% blank white space. I’m uncertain if the photo was supposed to be turned 90 degrees to take up the entire page and it wasn’t. Or, maybe the junior layout person couldn’t figure out how to crop images to fit. Or maybe text was supposed to be there and didn’t show up by deadline or was dropped. And yet, on one page (p156), text about Major Jope snakes around a photo and fills the page. Dunno. Odd, though.
Still, it’s photo-copia for DO-217 enthusiasts.
Enjoyed it.
— Reviewed by Russ Lockwood
