Review by Felix Bustelo

The Profile Morskie series of soft bound books are noted for their excellent and highly detailed plans and drawings. For this reason, they are popular with modelers around the world in spite of one major barrier: all of the text is in Polish.

The fifth volume in this series covers the HMS Warspite. The 36-page volume dedicates 20 pages to the development of the Queen Elizabeth class and the history of the Warspite through her career. Since I cannot read Polish, I cannot comment on the accuracy of the text. However, what attracts ship modelers to this series of books lies in the middle 13 pages.

This section contains possibly the most detailed plans that I have seen. There is a fold out plan showing a starboard profile and overhead view of the ship. The following pages then dissect each exposed section, deck and gun from bow to stern in astounding detail. Major sections, like the bridge superstructure, are further broken down, providing details that are obstructed by other deck housings, gun placements and other fittings. Most of these supporting drawings provide a 360 degree as well as overhead and underneath view of these sections. In total, there are more than 100 plan drawings in what appears to be 1/400 scale.

The plans presented in this volume depict the Warspite in her 1943 appearance, which she had her full complement of 20mm Oerlikons placed all over the ship and her spotting plane was removed. So, if you wish to model the Warspite in another fit, you may need another source or the answers may lay the Polish text. After several perusals, I was able to reason out some of the Polish words in the plans and photo captions and perhaps a Polish-native language dictionary could help decipher some of the text.

The language barrier notwithstanding, this is an excellent modeler's reference which will help you in superdetailing any model of the Warspite. The book is relatively inexpensive ($11 US at Research In Scale) and the plans make it worth every penny.