270170 - SUPERMARINE SPITFIRE MK I In RAF Service - 1936 to the Battle of Britain: Photo Archive No 1

By Mark Postlethwaite

For quite a few years, Simon Parry and Mark Postlethwaite have been building up a huge library of original WWII aviation photos, partly as a hobby but mainly to help provide photos for the books that they publish.  With over 30,000 now in the collection, they realised that they had more than enough to produce a series of photo books on individual aircraft types and sub-types.  They set out to make the series as ideally suited to modellers and artists as possible, so large photos, using A4 landscape format, and minimal text except for extended captions.  Effectively their aim is to produce a 21st Century version of the Profile Publications series of books from the 1960s, using the latest technology to reproduce their wartime photos to the highest standard possible.

This series is unique in that it will be able to provide large format ORIGINAL photos up to full A4 landscape format width, which is at least 50% larger than any standard book can deliver.  Combined with the specialist knowledge of a team of historians and contributors, each book should provide unbeatable and accurate references for any modelling or painting project.

"We chose the Spitfire MkI for the first book as, surprisingly, hardly any book has been solely devoted to the MkI.  During the research for the project, we studied dozens of published Spitfire MkI modelling articles and found that nearly all of them were wrong, with the same mistakes repeated over and over again.  As with our Battle of Britain Combat Archive series, we have gone back to source material for these books and studied original documents and period photos, and not relied on restored aircraft or modern books."

This book contains approx 130 original wartime/pre-war photos and 6 in-depth profiles with side-views plus and top and underside views.