The Aircraft Profiles were perhaps the first series to offer potted histories of one aircraft type, together with colour three-views that were reasonably accurate. Long since superseded, they nonetheless incorporated a lot of information in a very small space.

Jay Frank Dial's offering on the Airacobra has the development and production history of the type, although later production details are somewhat glossed over. It does tell the story of how the RAF rejected the type after the first squadron took them on charge and found that they didn't match up to the Bell Corporation's hype. The USAAF came to the same conclusion, but received rather more of the production run and so had to make the best of it. Dial's account includes some account of the P-39's service in Alaska against the Japanese and detachments to Iceland.

There is far less mention of the type's use by the Russians, who found that it was an ideal aircraft for use in the low-level ground attack role. Even in the middle 1960s, this was fairly well-known - Chuck Yeager had made a lot of Russian experience with the P-39 when on post-war "goodwill tours" which were anything but, but propaganda turned to reality when he broke away from his script and actually said good things about his hosts (and he had the hangovers to prove it) - so the glossing over of the experience of the biggest user of the P-39 is rather inexplicable.

Some unusual photographs and some less common colour views round off this entry in the Profile series. ( )