Review by Felix Bustelo

AJ Press, the publishers of the great Monografie Morskie series, also has a companion line of books under the banner Battles & Campaigns. Unlike the Monografie Morskie books, which focus on either a particular class or ship, the Battles & Campaigns series cover ships and navies during a particular time period or military event.

The second book in this series is dedicated to the Polish Navy in 1939. As you may know, it was Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 that triggered World War II. Poland did not have a large navy at that time, but they did have some good ships including submarines. This book tries to shine some light on the composition and state of the Polish Navy in the years just prior to the war.

As is the case with all AJ Press books, the text and photo captions are entirely in Polish. While this may not really present a problem with Monografie Morskie titles, which are full of photos and detailed plans, it does take away some of the enjoyment of this book for me. I would have liked very much to be able to read the text of this book because it would have been interesting to learn about the Polish Navy.

This 200 page, hardcover book is crammed with 194 pictures, 5 line drawings, 4 maps and 4 charts, so there plenty of visual references for the modelers. In addition to photos of Polish ships, there are some of British, French, German and Russian ships. I guess that some comparisons are made between the Polish Navy to these others as well as the relationships among these navies in the years leading up to the war.

The photographs are an excellent resource, with good overall and detail shots of some of the ships in the Polish Navy at that time. Photos of the destroyers Grom, Blyskawica, Wicher and Burza, the minesweeper Gryf, the gunboat Mazur, the submarines Orzel, Sep and Wilk and even the liners Piludski and Batory are provided. These photos will provide good visual references for modelers wishing to build the Mirage kits of some of these ships. Also included are many interesting photos of the ships and boats used in what you could call Poland's other navy, the inland waterway and river flotilla.

What attracted me to this book was the hope that it would contain photos to help me build my Mirage kits of the Polish Navy ships and in this regard it delivers. I just wish that AJ Press would publish an English language version of this book as I really would have liked to have read and learned more about this navy during this particular time period. My thanks to Warship Books for providing this review copy.