An extremely satisfying purchase.
This book is a truly ambitious survey of German and Italian aircraft, their civil and military customers, airlines, companies, and engineers throughout Latin America. Considering the scope of their subject, for a one volume effort, the authors have succeeded in producing an excellent stand-alone volume and a must have for any student of aviation. Coverage includes "transient" aircraft and post WWII activities as well. The book is well illustrated, has some color plates that are pretty decent and an excellent index. The TOC is arranged alphabetically by country with each chapter covering aircraft, airlines and indigenous production efforts when appropriate. "Axis" airlines and expat engineers also get their own chapter. A nice surprise was a chapter on aircraft that would be classified as today general aviation and privately owned.

This is an incredible book and highly recommended across multiple aviation spectrum's of interest. I look forward to more works by Mr. Tincopa and Mr. Rivas. ( )

Rather more of an encyclopedia than a narrative history, if there is something to say about German, Italian or Japanese aircraft in regards to Latin America it seems to be in this book.

Basically two trends are addressed. One is how the region provided an outlet for a German aviation industry during the constraints of the Versailles period and when a variety of efforts were made to get commercial air transportation established on a regular basis. The other trend is how in the mid-to-late Thirties Italy (and to a lesser degree Germany) became a source of high-performance warplanes for a number of air arms with varying degrees of success, with the biggest failure being experienced by Chile. That nation tried to totally reequip with German and Italian aircraft (even pro-fascist Argentina saw fit to diversify) and most of these aircraft failed to live up to their promise, particularly the Breda 65, which was supposed to do double-duty as a fighter and an attack plane and turned out to be incapable of even flying safely. One might have wished that the authors had seen fit to include more of the period Chilean media coverage, which one is given to believe was scathing.

If there is a particular lack in this work the authors might have provided a chapter giving an overall perspective of both the American effort to shut down German & Italian aviation efforts in the Western Hemisphere and, for that matter, what was the perspective from Berlin & Rome in terms of their aviation policy towards the region; this would act as something of a capstone to what is a very impressive work. ( )