Sd.Kfz.182 Pz.Kpfw.VI King Tiger
Author: God knows?
Softcover - 96 pages
Publisher: Model Art
Price: £12 Approx.
Introduction
Model Art of Japan publish the extremely successful Japanese language series 'Panzergraph, but also produce other series, one of which, their 'AFV Super Detail Photo Books' has seven titles in the series, of which this one...on the King Tiger...is the eighth!
The Book
The book is A4 sized, soft cover as it says above and packed to the absolute limit with close-up detailed shots of the King Tiger. Nearly all the book is in full colour, with only the odd photograph in black & white where the author wanted to illustrate a specific point and there was I suppose, no colour shot available?
For those of you familiar with the Panzergraph series, and other titles from Model Art of Japan, you'll be delighted that this book contains full English text alongside the Japanese text instead of just a translation of selected parts!
The book is logically broken down into specific areas of interest. To begin with there's a short history of the King Tiger, and this is then followed by individual sections concentrating on areas such as the front hull, turret, fighting compartment interior, running gear and so on. Each of these sections has many pages of photographs, sometimes as many as fifteen per page concentrating on the area of interest. Variations, where known are illustrated, along with different example of the same thing shown on different surviving King Tigers. Photographs from Bovington in the UK are used, along with those from Samur in France, Kubinka in Russia and the Swiss Military Museum.
Each of the sections is accompanied by comprehensive text describing the history of the part, along with reasons the part changed if it did during the production run of the vehicle. For example, the author even goes to some length to describe the four different types of track used on the Tiger II chassis!
denotes 
Vinnie Branigan
