Vintage Eagle Publishing | Digitized Version - Captured Eagles

Reviewed by Floyd S. Werner, Jr.

Title: Digitized Version - Captured Eagles-German WWII Aircraft Captured by the Allies
Written by: Roger S. Gaemperle
Publisher: Vintage Eagle Publishing
Reviewer: Floyd S. Werner, Jr. IPMS # 26266
ISBN: 978-3-9524089-0-2
MSRP: $13.99
Review Type: Reference
Product Type: Digital Book
Company Info: Vintage Eagles Publications

I reviewed the printed version of Captured Eagles before so when I was asked to review the new digital version I was thinking to myself, what could be so different? Was I ever wrong. I guess I live in the stone-age. Well welcome to the world of iBooks.

After you download the iBooks app from the iTunes store you are set to download your books. Just do a quick search for either the author or the actual title. Once you have that just download as you would anything.

When you ‘open’ up the new book, you are treated to the cover photo followed by 130 pages. At the bottom of the page you see the contents of that section. Just flick the page as you would turn a page in a ‘real’ book or just touch the page you want to go to.

Unlike a regular book you can zoom in on the text, but more importantly you can zoom in on the photos. I mean really zoom in to the photos. Tap the picture on the page and you are instantly shown a full page view of the photo. The bigger the iPad or screen the bigger the photo. Still not big enough? You can use your fingers to get even closer. Unfortunately it doesn’t hold at that bigger zoom but you can pull it up to see what is there. The photos are beautifully scanned and very crisp. To close it just hit the X. The color photos are exceptionally well done.

One thing that you can do here that you can’t do with a ‘normal’ book is use the search function. You can lighten the pages and bookmark it to come back to. You can highlight the text. You can even leave notes.

The book is broken down into nine sections, Reconnaissance, Bombers, Fighter Bombers, Destroyers, Fighters, Jets, Nightfighter, Mistel, and Under Allied Flag.

The text though out the book is well written and the information is invaluable to the historian and/or modeler. The book contains eight excellent profile drawings by Simon Schatz. The photos support the profiles and as I mentioned before they are beautifully rendered.

When there is more than one photo of an aircraft there are a storyboard of them. All you have to do is hit them to blow them up. The digital version contains 13 new photos that were either not available or unable to be included in the printed version. This format allows the author to update the ‘book’ with the latest information and photos.

As with the book, there are decals that correspond to the profiles. The decals are excellent and come in all three aircraft scales.

There are some great photos including a new D-13 and the all black Bf 109G-6/AS “Green 5”.

You can even download a test chapter to see all the features before you buy.

The modeler and historian will find this book an absolute must have. As a modeler, I love this kind of stuff. There are plenty of new photos, but what is really nice is you can zoom in and see what you are looking at. Whether you enjoy the hard copy books or the benefits of digital, this publication is well done and is very professional. I highly recommend both versions but I’ve been learning to use my iPad on my workbench and like it better than the paper version.

Highly recommended.

Thanks to Roger Gaemperle for the review copy. You can obtain yours by doing a search on iBooks for the author or title. If you want the book you can just look up. Make sure you tell him you heard about it here.

Vintage Eagle Publishing | Digitized Version - Captured Eagles

Reviewed by Floyd S. Werner, Jr.

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