Review by Felix Bustelo

The Monografie Morskie series of soft bound books are noted for their excellent and detailed plans and drawings. For this reason, like the Profile Morskie series, they are popular with modelers around the world in spite of the fact that all of the text is in Polish.

The 8th volume in this series covers the German pocket battleships Admiral Graf Spee and Admiral Scheer. The 64-page volume appears to extensively cover the development, building, refits and modifications, and service history of these ships. It is a shame that no English language translation exists of this book. However, what attracts ship modelers to this series of books are the illustrations: photos, plans and line drawings and color renditions.

While this book has more pages than the Profile Morskie books that I have seen, it contains fewer plan drawings. The plans provided in this volume are of the Graf Spee. A 1/400 scale profile, overhead, bow and stern view plan is provided as a loose fold out insert. This is helpful since you can lay the plan on a table or tack it to a bulletin board by your workbench. The more detailed sectional plans appear in the last seven pages of the book, almost like an appendix. While the drawings here are detailed, I don't find them as extensive as the ones found in Profile Morskie volumes. The plans show the Graf Spee in her 1939 appearance, but some of the views show a different searchlight platform, which may have been in place in an earlier fit.

There are some very nice color renditions on the front and back covers of the book. The front cover (see image above) has a painting of the Graf Spee in action. The inside front cover has a color profile of the Graf Spee in 1938 and a profile and overhead view on her in 1939 sporting a camouflage scheme and a false second stack just aft of the catapult. The inside back cover has a front and back color view of the Graf Spee's forward superstructure and bridge in a camouflage scheme. The back cover has color renderings of the Reichsmarine and Kriegsmarine flags, the Graf Spee's Heinkel He 60D float bi-plane and the ships shield that appeared at the bow on either side. Having a color representation of this shield is a plus because it can be scanned, sized and made into decals for use on a model.

While all of the drawings in the book are of the Graf Spee, the black and white photographs contained in the book are predominately of the Admiral Scheer. Of the 83 photographs contained in the book, 58 are of the Scheer, while 25 are of the Graf Spee. Still, some detailed plans of the Scheer would have been nice for those wishing to build or detail a model of this ship.

The language barrier notwithstanding, this is an excellent modeler's reference which will help you in superdetailing any model of the Graf Spee and also provide help with the Scheer. The book is relatively inexpensive ($14 US at Research In Scale) and is a good value.