Editions Du Barbotin

Focus No. 4: Char B1 bis

by  Pascal Danjou, photographs by Eric Schwartz
Reviewed By  Scott Hollingshead, IPMS# 34786

[book cover image]

MSRP: 9.95 Euros (about $14 USD)
ISBN: 978-2-917661-05-5
Website: www.minitracks.fr

This softcover book from the publisher of Minitracks, Trackstory, and Centurytracks, is the fourth installment of their walkaround series entitled Focus. This edition is dedicated to the French Char B1 bis intermediate battle tank, and is a welcome reference for those who, like me, may have the Tamiya kit released in 2006 sitting in their stash of unbuilt kits. The 52-page book is written primarily in French, but within the main sections, each page contains the text translated into English too. This is also done for photo captions. There are seventeen black-and-white, period photographs of the vehicle including shots of the prototype, various vehicles in French service, two vehicles in use by the German army, and even a picture of the mine-roller variant. There are also 142 color walkaround photographs of the tanks located at the Samur Tank Museum, and ten color plates of tank "Bourgueil" #355 (five in 1/35 and five in 1/72).

[review image] [review image] The book opens with a single page entitled "characteristics," and provides all of the specifications of the tank such as weights, measurements, speeds, armor, armament, and crew, to name a few, in French and English. The book next takes a fourteen-page journey explaining the history (or "historique" as printed in the book) of the Char B1 bis and this includes two pages showing the names given to each of the tanks produced. In this section, the French text is on the left side of each page, with the English translation on the right. The next twenty-nine pages contain the walkaround photographs of the "Rhone" #309 and "Flandres" #128. Three pages are used to show 1/35 and 1/72 color plates of "Bourgueil" #355 as previously mentioned (the page showing the 1/72 plates includes some notes regarding some of the different details between the tanks that were produced), and the last page contains the bibliography as well as other titles offered by the publisher. The front cover has a color photograph of "Rhone", and the back cover a color photo of "Flandres".

For me, the big hits of this publication are the information provided, especially within the history section, including all of the tank names. The walkaround section is nicely done, and the top of each page shows a small color drawing of the tank with the section shown in the photographs highlighted in red. Another nice feature is the scale color plates included in the back of the book. The only real miss for me is a comment in the walkaround section that states, "in both cases, the camouflage scheme and markings give a large array of what was applied in 1940 but are wrong and cannot be used as a reference." There are also a couple of instances where the text is provided in French only, and the area that would typically contain the English translation is printed again in French.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book as a reference when building a Char B1 bis, as the interior and detail photographs are very useful and informative for model builders. The listing of all of the produced tanks names is also a nice piece of information to have, and the general notes included on the page with the 1/72 scale color plates are good as well. Finally, the history contains plenty of information regarding various changes that took place from the inception of the tank through all of its years of service, for those who want to do something a little different with their building of this tank.

My thanks to the folks at Editions Du Barbotin for providing a copy of this book to the IPMS/USA for review.