This is the second book of a new series on aircraft units, and it makes sense that it would be JG 54. The Green Hearts were a unit that fought almost all war long, first forming in early 1940, in time to participate in some of the Battle for France and in the Battle of Britain, this latter event starting in August of 1940. Several of the sub-units of JG 54 were the result of renaming of other units, a practice that seems to have been quite prevalent in the Luftwaffe during WWII. The names changed, but the pilots, planes and crew did not.

In early/mid 1941, they participated in the Balkans conflict before being pulled back for where they spent most of the rest of the war; the Russian Front. They ended the war in Estonia with a final tally of nearly 9500 victories.

Starting with the Bf-109E, they went on to the F and the G before becoming what is probably the first unit on the Russian Front to fly the FW-190, a plane that most of the sub-units of JG 54 flew until the end of the war. In the final months, the 109G units transitioned to the 190D-9 to add to the list of 190 variants they flew.

It is difficult to be very detailed in a book like this so it is mostly photographs with a short history of the unit going along with them. JG 54 had some well known personalities like Nowotny, Hrabek, Trautloft, Ostermann, Philipp, Rudorfer and more.

The decal sheet includes the unique markings for four aircraft in the three major scales. I am particularly pleased to see one of their hacks included in the list.

- Messerschmitt Bf 109 F-2; 'White 9', flown by Oblt. Hans Philipp, Staffelkapitän of 4./JG 54, Mal. Owsischtschi, 10 August 1941,

- Bücker Bü 131 D-2; W.Nr. 1683, coded 'KG+GB' of 2./JG 54, Krasnogvardeysk airfield, Russia, late March 1942,

- Messerschmitt Bf 109 G-2; 'Blue 5' of 7./JG 54, probably Isotscha airfield in Smolensk area, Russia, winter of 1942-1943,

- Focke-Wulf Fw 190 A-5; W.Nr. 0150 1501, 'White 4', flown by Oblt. Walter Nowotny, Staffelkapitän of 1./JG 54, Russia, summer 1943.

The decals themselves are superbly printed by Cartograf and each of the large profiles on these planes provides color and detail information that the modeler will need to build a nice replica. If you are a fan ofJG 54 and their interesting camouflage schemes, then you should seriously consider picking this one up.

February 2013

You can find this sheet at www.kagero.pl. Thanks to Kagero for the review set.

If you would like your product reviewed fairly and fairly quickly, please contact me or see other details in the Note to Contributors.