Books on the Heinkel He-177, 277, 274 "Greif"

Aero Publishers "Heinkel 177 Greif"

     An obscure little book I picked up cheaply off EBay. It is quite delightful and does prove that some publishers were turning out really useful reference material 30 years ago. This little gem was published in 1967 in the USA and was written by R. S. Hirsch & Uwe Feist in cooperation with H. J. Nowarra. You would expect a book of this vintage to feature a few tiny black & white pictures and lots of dull text. However this book (of 49 pages) features 6 pages of scale profiles to highlight difference between the sub-types. What is more it has 4 pages of colour profiles and copious numbers of illustrative sketches of various aircraft sub-systems and interiors. The text is kept brief and the photo's are nice and large. For its time this was a quality production and it had obviously spent many year gathering dust in an attic or bookshelf. Obviously dated by modern standards this is a lovely little collector's item. I recommend it even though it is doubtful whether it will be easy to find a copy.

VDM "Das Kampfflugzeug Heinkel He 177"

     ISBN 3 925480 49 8 The guy who sold this on EBay was a master salesman and I was under the impression that this obscure German-language book was the ultimate He-177 reference guide. When I got it in August 2006 I was very disappointed, firstly it is very small (roughly A5 size), softback and contained far fewer pictures that the Manfred Griehl book (opposite - this page). Admittedly German is a little easier to understand than Russian or Polish (at least I learnt some in school!). On the plus side this 80 page  book does have five pages of colour photos and profiles. There is even a line drawing that passes as a small scale plan! There are no internals or systems sketches. It might have been nice if Airlife had teamed up with VDM to combine their efforts so a few of these good bits made it into Manfred's book. Get a copy of this book if you can but I really don't think it is worth the £15 price printed on the cover!

Airlife "Heinkel He 177, 277, 274"

     Published originally in 1998 this is yet another book by the prolific Manfred Griehl and Joachim Dressel. ISBN 1 85310 364 0. I got this for a good price off of EBay around August 2006. The book is 248 pages long and, as you would expect is packed with vast volumes of worthy written information on the topic. Pretty much authoritative stuff. There are many good photo's but the book is not in a large format and the paper isn't very glossy. This renders it a pretty average affair, all round, for those of us interested in it for visual reference material. As with their "Bombers of the Luftwaffe" you will find no colour pictures of drawn profiles here. Although there are quite a few line drawings and sketches of internal systems and other engineering features, there is nothing that truly counts as a set of scale plans for the modeller to use. This puts this book firmly in the category of "worthy but dull" whilst making it unworthy of the 'coffee table' book category. If you are interested solely in this history of this aircraft, with a few visuals to-boot, then this is the book for you. If you are a modeller looking for lots of useful reference material then this book may disappoint. However, there is not a lot of good reference material on the He-177 around so it is better than nothing. Not fully recommended for the modeller but it is 'horses for courses' - the historians amongst us may get a buzz out of this.

Warpaint Series No 33 "Heinkel He 177"

     ISSN 1363-0369 Published by Hall Park Books. Written by Kev Darling with 1/72nd scale plans by Chris Bowley. Purchased via EBay October 2006. Those of you familiar with the Warpaint series will pretty know what to expect from this by now. Your £8.50 will buy you a soft-back stapled magazine-style book of 34 pages. This includes 12 pages (or partial pages) with colour profiles or colour photo's. There is a center section 'pull out' for the scale plans (an He 177A-5/R4) and the usual 2-page "In Detail" section by Phillipe Couderchon and J-M Goyat. There are also several interior and detail photo's and sketches never seen elsewhere. This book is head and shoulders above every other reference so far mentioned on this page. Grab a copy if you can find one.