Introduction

This offering from Pen and Sword as part of their Land Craft series looks at the Jeep during World War 2. These books are I feel an attempt to offer the modeller a combination package covering both reference on the vehicles and a look at the models and items available to replicate the Jeep as a scale model.

Review

This offering from Pen and Sword is authored by Lance Cole, who I am sorry to say is a new name to me, especially as he has seven titles available from Pen and Sword alone at this time. This is a soft backed with a good card cover protecting 64 pages of semi gloss paper. The contents of this title are laid out as follows:

Introduction
Development and Design
The Jeep in Detail
Camouflage and Markings
Model Showcase
Modelling Products
In Service and In Action
Second World War Jeep variants

I have to start by saying that I commend Lance Cole for tackling a subject such as the Jeep and covering a broad sweep including the modelling aspect in 64 pages, a very brave man. The text in this offering is well written and an informative read. The book begins with the story of the Jeep prior to being accepted for military service. This has been very cleverly tackled with a nice mix of text, diagrams and period photographs. The photographs look at the jeep from the aspect of promotion and cover the steps taken to get the vehicle accepted by the military and looking at engineering and capabilities of the vehicle that made it such a good choice for military service.

Continuing on an there is a section covering some of the details that are not always easily seen; I have to say that this section of the book does look to have suffered from the space limitations put on the author, but I am not going to knock him as it is easy enough to find an image of a needed aspect online.

Before reaching the modelling section of the title the reader is presented with a nice selection of colour plates covering the jeep in four plains. The modelling section starts with a showcase of finished models that are both stand alone and in diorama settings. I cannot say this gives you answers to modelling questions, but it does get the juices flowing and gives you ideas for what you may wish to do as regards finish and it does cover adding some elements that are visually pleasing and shows some progress shots. The modelling products section covers the Bronco and Tamiya products in 1//35th scale for the most part providing information in a straight forward manner, but it does not try to push you in either direction. There are products by a number of other companies including Braille scale offerings from Airfix. At the very end of this section there is a tick box list covering aspects that the modeller needs to pay attention to.

The end of this title looks at a number of vehicles with a mix of period photographs and more recent images looking at jeeps in un-restored condition and perfect examples. This is a nice photographic section accompanied with nicely broken down text.

Conclusion

This is a great addition to the range of books usually covering tanks and comes along at an ideal time for me as I have two LRDG jeeps to build. The author has done a very good of covering a fairly complex subject in a small number of pages and tackles the model side of the Jeep as well. Both the written and photographic aspect has been well tackled and provides a good amount of information on the topic.