Review: IAR-80 by Dan Antoniu and George Cicos

IAR-80

by Dan Antoniu and George Cicos (Editions TMA, Paris, 2008).

The IAR80 was the only indigenously designed, high performance combat aircraft built in a large series by any of the minor Axis powers to see four years of continuous front line service in WWII. It is therefore a worthy subject of a major book.

Those of us who pre-ordered this book in French have had a long wait – some five years by my calculation – so it had a lot of expectation to satisfy.

Was it worth the wait? With minor reservations, yes!


Illustration.

The cover - a finely detailed painting of an IAR80 banking - is well designed, clean, simple and attractive.

The forty five-view, 1/72 scale, line drawings and 64 larger colour illustrations by Teodor Liviu Morosanu within the book are of the very high standard that have already gained him international recognition. He is arguably amongst the best in the business of accurate aircraft illustration anywhere.

The colour illustrations cover every sub-mark of IAR80, including prototype and experimental models. The superb black and white line drawings lack only the series 21 to 75, for reasons unclear. (Perhaps the authors can explain this curious omission?) Detail-demanding scale modelers could not be happier with the results.

There are at least 300 photographs, selected from some three times as many available of the aircraft, and they cover every sub-mark of the IAR80. Amongst them are every known colour photo of the aircraft.

Something that adds little to our understanding of the IAR80, but certainly adds to the period atmosphere, are illustrations from the covers of the wartime Romanian aviation magazine Aripi Romanesti and caricatures of IAR80 pilots from its pages.

A regrettable omission from the illustrations is maps of the airfields mentioned in the text. This would have made it much easier for non-Romanian readers to follow the course of events on the ground.


The Text.

The research that has gone into IAR-80 is very extensive. For those aviation buffs who want detailed facts and figures, operational descriptions, candid wartime reports and pilot memories, it is almost all there.

While there is doubtless going to be scope to refine details of the book’s text from newly discovered documentary sources in the future, some parts, such as the material gained from interviews with former pilots, are unrepeatable and can never be superseded.

The text is not particularly analytical. It presents the facts as they are in the primary sources. In one way this is refreshing, as it allows the reader to draw his own conclusions. On the other hand it is uncritical and leaves several interesting points of controversy unaddressed. For example, we now know from Soviet loss returns that Romanian victory claims at Odessa in 1941 were exaggerated approximately threefold and it would be interesting to know how this affects IAR80 claims.

The text would have been improved if sub-headings had been used within the chapters. It is a little disconcerting to find it switching from the front to rear areas in Romania without warning. Also, more use of statistical tables would have made some information included in the text easier to understand. An index would also have been an advantage, but clearly space was at a premium in a book as heavily illustrated as this.

This reviewer has bought almost every other book on the wartime Romanian air force over the years, and so was looking for something new. It is there in the detail. For example, this reviewer was unaware that there were two attempts to fit Junkers Jumo engines – a DB601Aa in IAR80 No.13 in 1941 and a DB605A in IAR81C No.326 in 1943.

The news that a 1,660 hp Gnome Rhone was being fitted when the IAR Brasov factory was bombed in 1944 was also unknown to this reviewer. (I have tried to track down which engine this might be, but the most powerful Gnome Rhone I can find from my own books is the 1,320hp Gnome Rhone 14R 4/5 as projected in 1944 for the Me323G. Has anyone any idea about the identity of the 1,660 hp Gnome Rhone proposed for the IAR80?)

The victory claims list also makes interesting reading, with at least 13 pilots claiming five or more victories on the type – the usual number considered necessary to qualify as an “ace”. Even allowing for some exaggeration, this is no mean achievement considering almost all opponents were the air forces of great powers and the best Romanian fighter pilots tended to be creamed off to the Bf109 squadrons. For all its limitations, it is doubtful that any fighter outside those built or designed by the major powers was more extensively used in WWII or with more effect than the IAR80.


Editing.

IAR-80 aspires to a high standard of presentation and largely succeeds. One might quibble about some minor editorial details, but this would be to detract unnecessarily from a very worthwhile book.


Language.

IAR-80 is in French, but this should not put off English speakers or others, especially those speaking other romance languages. The statistical content is easily comprehensible and the extensive, high quality illustration overcomes any linguistic difficulties.


Recommended?

Definitely. This reviewer recommends IAR-80 to aviation and military historians, scale modelers, Eastern Front specialists, etc., etc. It is a unique book on a unique subject that will fill a significant gap on many a WWII bookshelf.

Combine IAR-80 with the article on the IAR37, 38 and 39 in AirMagazine No.8 by the same authors, illustrator and publisher, and with their forthcoming article in AirMagazine on the JRS79B, and one will have a comprehensive study of Romanian WWII combat types.

Combine IAR-80 with the same publisher’s AirMag Hors Serie 1, Les Messerschmitt Bf109 roumains, and one has an almost complete overview of Romanian fighter operations in WWII.

IAR-80 is therefore the keystone in a wider series of authoritative works on the Romanian Air Force in WWII, all of which deserve to be more widely known.

Sid, I am curious how you reached this particular figure. Could you elaborate?

Gen. Dénes

Hi Denes,

There is an article from some three years ago, called, I think, "Antonescu's Eagles", in an academic journal (possibly the Journal of Slavic Military Studies). It came out shortly after your Prime Decade.

It is mostly based on Romanian archive material. It is about the development of the Romanian Air Force in the 1930s up to and including the 1941 campaign. One of its strong points is that it also uses Soviet sources for the Odessa fighting, including their loss figures.

I will try to get more concrete details for you to follow up.

Cheers,

Sid.

Hi Denes,

Try:

Antonescu's Eagles against Stalin's Falcons: The Romanian Air Force, 1920-1941 by Alexander Statiev

In: The Journal of Military History, Vol. 66, No. 4 (Oct., 2002), pp. 1085-1113 (article consists of 29 pages)


The article is available from JSTOR.

If you have problems getting a copy, please let me know.

I would be interested to know what you make of it.

Sid.

This post has been edited by sid guttridge on June 06, 2008 04:45 pm

Thanks, Sid. I already knew about that study. Although I don't agree with some of the conclusions drew by the author, I actually used parts of the study as reference for my latest book, dealing with the same topic.

Gen. Dénes

Hi Denes,

That article did not contain any major advances in popular knowledge of the Romanian aircraft industry, but it was at least academic confirmation that non-academic work such as your own was largely correct, so it was useful.


I presume that you also know:

The Development of the Hungarian Aircraft Industry, 1938-1944. by Miklos Szabo. JMH Vol.65, No.1. (January 2001).

Cheers,

Sid

Yes, I do.
If you will find similar studies on Central and East European aviation history, please let us/me know.

Gen. Dénes

Hi Sid,

Thanks for the detailed review on this much-awaited book!
Regarding the German engines, those were in fact Daimler-Benz.
As for the Ghone-Rhône radial mentioned in the book - a very interesting detail - it could be any of the 14R series, and specifically the 14R-4 Météore rated at 1,580 hp. The engine was designed in order to extract the maximum potential out of a well tried cylinder layout used in the 14K and 14N. The R-4 variant was also the last Gnome-Rhône powerplant fitted to a Bloch fighter, the MB 157.01 prototype. To attain this goal, they had to improve several aspects, including lubrication, cooling effectiviness and materials' resistance. It was also fitted with a two-speed supercharger in order to optimize altitude performance (at 6000m). I will refrain from speculating on what could have been achieved had the IAR 80 been fitted with the GR 14R-4 or a similar sub-variant, but the results obtained by matching it with the refined MB 157 airframe were truly outstanding; the aircraft wasn't a development of the MB 152 or 155 but rather a completely new project with enlarged wing and a new fuselage. It flew for the first time in March 1942 (and thus under German control). Despite the prevailing conditions, the flight tests were a success. When the Germans ordered the prototype transferred from Bordeaux to Orly, they were astonished to see it landing 40 min. before the expected arrival time! The performance attained by the MB 157 was amazing for 1942/1943: 670km/h at 8500m, 710 km/h at 8500m (for 15 min in surpuissance )... The engine was taken from the aircraft and sent to Germany. As for the airframe, it was destroyed during an Allied air raid in 1944.

The data was taken from the superlative tome by Serge Joanne on the Bloch fighters, "Le Bloch MB-152" (Lela-Presse, Boulogne-sur-Mer, 2003).
In spite of its title, the book covers the entire family from the MB 150 down to the superb MB 157 prototype.

Cheers,

Ruy

This post has been edited by Ruy Aballe on June 09, 2008 12:08 am

Hi Ruy,

Thanks.

Do you know how far development of the 14R-4 Météore got?

Did it get beyond prototype stage?

Was it tested enough to establish its reliability by 1944?

Cheers,

Sid.

Hi Sid,

You are welcome.
Here goes a (very!) quick answer; I am doing this without having my references at hand - will check the details over the weekend.

1. Yes. It reached small scale production by 1943. Early prototypes of the R series were available by the time of fall of France (a whole new generation of French combat aircraft then being designed and/or about to be built was to be powered by the new promising radial).
Shortly after the VE day, production was resumed by SNECMA (upon the nationalisation of Gnome-Rhône). The 14R series was used on several French designs of the immediate post-war era.
2. Yes.
3. Yes.

Besides from dealing with high oil consumption, a problem that plagued several earlier Gnome-Rhône engines, the 14R series (and specifically the R-4) had an excellent two-stage compressor that enabled amazing altitude performance above 5000m.
Interestingly, some (non French) sources claim the engine could produce 1700 hp at 7000 m.

Cheers,

Ruy

This post has been edited by Ruy Aballe on July 10, 2008 11:10 pm