Good morning folks!
I'm probably the guy you want to ask about this.
A bit about the book: it is not a redo of my two earlier volumes, which were primarily modeler-centric. This is an entirely new work based on primary source factory and RLM documentation from the Bundesarchiv, NARA, the IWM, etc. The goal is to tell the story of the the development of the 109 airframe from it's first appearance in the Entwicklungsprogramm docs of 1934/35, up through the last postwar variants... and yes, they absolutely count as 109s, so their story deserves to be told. (Somewhat surprisingly, good primary source info on Avias and Hispanos is far more difficult to come by than it is for wartime 109s.) I will not be getting into operational usage or extensive coverage of flight test data - there are lots of good publications covering that info. The only profiles will be those documenting factory and type specific basic camouflage schemes rendered by Anders Hjörtsberg, whose work I trust implicitly when it comes to the subtle nuances of the 109, and there won't be line drawings like Vogt's book. However, there WILL be lots of photos, including document copies, and to Dagger's point above, the real challenge is to take this extensive history and boil it down to make it thorough, understandable, and not exceed 400 pages or so.
This book has dominated nearly every minute of my time since June 2022, and I've had to purchase a new 4 TB external drive just to hold everything I've amassed for it; and that of course does not count the decades of time I've invested in researching this type from every conceivable angle. I've had the great fortune to have the assistance of veterans, restorers, archivists, museum directors, and researchers in almost every corner of the world, and the goal is to produce nothing less than the single most comprehensive English-language work covering the 109's development and production yet written. And I'll go ahead and say this - I will doubtless miss some things. This topic is so vast, with primary source documentation spread across multiple continents, that there will undoubtedly be details which escape my attention. But if I do miss something, I guarantee you it won't be for lack of trying.
The goal is to have the manuscript done and delivered by mid-May, and I'm grinding away every single day on it... last I heard, the publication date is targeted for sometime in June.
So, back to it... thanks for your interest, and I sincerely hope you find the book interesting and useful once it's in your hands!
Best regards,
Lynn Ritger
