My god what am I doing with my life? I've been a book collector long enough to know what a horrible hobby it is. Books are big, ungainly, and easily susceptible to damage from water, sunlight, fire, and smoke. They're also losing popularity and are becoming more of a niche thing with each passing day. So why, later in life, have I decided to pick up yet another collecting pursuit, and of a book set no less?
Squadron Signal Publications is a long-lived publication arm of Squadron, a company that specialized in printing military books and selling scale models since the 1970's. It started in 1968 in Detroit, MI, but spent most of its years in Carrollton, Texas. Squadron Signal produced a steady stream of books about planes, ships, infantry, and tanks through the early 2000s, when it went through a series of ownership changes before finally landing in the hands of Brandon Lowe in Georgia, who's primarily a scale model enthusiast (you can read the story of how he acquired the Squadron brands here [squadron.com]). The company produced hundreds of books, although the frequency of releases became more sporadic in the late 2010s. What the label's publishing future holds is uncertain.
I first remember seeing Squadron Signal books at the hobby shops I would sometimes frequent. They were always beautiful to me, usually featuring nice paintings by Lou Drendel or Don Greer on the cover. They were often 8.5 in x 11 in softcovers in landscape format, though some issues were printed in portrait, and in the 2010s they started producing hardcover editions. Each one was packed with text and photos with captions. There were different series published, each with a different specialization:
1000: Aircraft In Action
The original "in action" series focused on a particular vehicle or class of vehicle, tracing the development and variants. These are all printed in landscape orientation and the photos are black and white but the books featured a color insert in the middle to show examples of the aircraft color schemes.
1601 - 1608: Mini in action series
One notable subset within the 1000 series is the "Mini in action" set. These eight books were similar to the rest of the 1000 series books but they were half the size at 8.5 in x 5.5 in and printed in portrait mode. I don't know the strategy behind this line. Despite the cute format, they are not written for children, these are just like other Squadron books and loaded with facts and photos. Most of this line though did not have their own full size book except for the A-10 Warthog. The others feature aircraft that are a bit more obscure so perhaps they used this format to give these vehicles treatment with less content. Or, maybe the publishers were just experimenting.
2000: Armor In Action
Focused on tanks and ground vehicles
3000: Infantry In Action
An eleven issue set spanning WWII and Vietnam troops
4000: Boats In Action
Boats and submarines, mostly from WWII but also some modern
5000 series
Included several groups:
- 5001 to 5009 (Modern Military Aircraft): this series of nine issues focused on a specific aircraft and included history and personal testimonials from pilots.
- 5501 to 5801 (Photo survey series): This series provided in-depth photo reviews of a vehicle, showing everything about the interior and exterior. The books were further categorized by subject type:
- Walk Around series: Aircraft and armor were in the "walk around" set
- On Deck: naval subjects
- At the Gate: A few civilian passenger planes are covered here
- Detail In Action: There were a few of these published that blended the features of the "in action" and "walk around" series
6000 series
This set is hard to categorize because it features a diverse array of subjects. I've seen these referred to as "specials" and they can cover various historical subjects like the air war in Vietnam, a survey of a vehicle's colors and markings in a certain era, modeling tips, a review of soldier uniforms and insignia, or a specific nationality's air force (such as the Finnish Air Force in WWII), and there's even one fantasy role-playing supplement. These are some of my favorites because they covered some obscure and little discussed parts of history and like all Squadron Signal books are filled with fascinating facts and graphics.
Notable subsets:
- Famous Aircraft of the World: a short but sweet three volume set of detailed aircraft books by Richard Caruana
- Fighting Colors: a set focused on paint schemes of selected aircraft
7000: Great Battles of the World series
There are eight books in this set of heavy softcovers. I managed to pick up a few of these and they sport great production quality, printed on thick, bright paper stock with many illustrations and photos of museum-caliber artifacts. They are historical books developed by Greek publisher Periscopio Publications, with Squadron Signal being the distributor.
Most of the first half of the set cover ancient battles in 480 BC, and the second half cover WWII topics.
8000: In Detail and Scale
There are some unit history books and a few scale modeling books here, but most of the series was made up of the "in detail and scale" run that featured aircraft and boats with lots of photos and descriptions of the physical properties of the vehicles and its variants. The ones I've seen reminded me of the "in action" series although these were written by different authors, are printed in portrait orientation, and I like the way they organize and format the material. These appear to have been intended mostly for modelers, but they're still interesting for general enthusiasts and historians.
10,000 series and up
This numbering starts a second generation run of subjects previously covered. There are new entries in the "in action" and "walk around" lines. These books are printed on nicer paper than the older lines, are squarebound rather than stapled, and feature more color photos than the earlier books.
- 10,000: New generation of aviation "in action" series. Many of the same vehicles in the 1000 series are covered, with new authors (mostly David Doyle) and new covers (some paintings and some photos).
- 12,000: New generation of armor "in action" books
- 14,000: New generation of naval "in action" books
- 25,000: New generation of aviation "walk around" books
- 26,000: New generation of naval "on deck" books
- 27,000: New generation of armor "walk around" books
- 28,000: New generation of civil aviation "at the gate" books
- 34,000: The "Squadron at Sea" series. I've not read any of these so I can't say for certain, but this appears to be an entirely new series focused on a specific boat rather than a class of boat. For example, each one is named for an instance of a boat such as "USS Arizona" or "USS Saratoga" rather than "Nimitz class" or "US cruisers".
- 36,000: Combat Chronicles series. There are only a few of these and they're oral histories of combat action.
- 39,000: A small run of "Detail in Action" books
The numbering gets a little wonky beyond this point, but some of the 10,000+ series entries got hardcover editions and they're in this range.
- 50,000: Hardcover editions of the 10,000+ series books? The numbering would be the same for the last three digits. For example, 52050 is the softcover version of 12050.
- 54,000: Hardcover editions of the 14,000 series books
- 65.000: Hardcover editions of the 25,000 series books
- 66,000: Hardcover editions of the 26,000 series books
- 67,000: Hardcover editions of the 27,000 series books
- 74,000: Hardcover editions of the 34,000 series books
- 76,000: Hardcover editions of the 36,000 series books
- 79,000: Hardcover editions of the 39,000 series books
And then it finally ends here:
- 80,000: "Historical Reference" series. There are only a few in this hardcover line offering highly detailed reviews of vehicles.
As you can see, it's a pretty extensive offering of items published over sixty years. I'm crazy to bother collecting them but I started buying them when I was a teen and have always found them interesting to read through. I am perhaps only partially crazy; I'm not going for a complete set. I'm mostly interested in just aviation, though I have picked up the infantry books, and select boats and armor entries. I will also not get the softcover of a book if I have the hardcover edition. There are also some books that had re-releases with different covers and I won't worry about being a completist here unless I can get the one I don't have for a song. It was also common for Squadron to take a book and update it a few years later with some extra pages, but the same cover; in those cases I'll just get the newer edition.
Also, I get most of these in bundles on eBay where your per book cost is more affordable. The books are not really worth much although some sellers tend to price them high. I've tried selling my doubles on eBay and the fish bite very slowly unless you really drop the price. I'd hope that also working in my favor is the fact that fewer people are into books but aggravatingly enough, there are just enough individual and institutional collectors that when there's a good deal, it gets snapped up or bid up.
As much as I like the books, the company made some questionable moves especially later in the 2010s. As I already noted, some of the books are almost identical re-releases of an earlier edition except for a new cover and higher price tag. Some of the books feel like smaller versions of coffee table books where ninety percent of the book is photos with little other substance (although the photos themselves are often treasures). There's also a great deal of duplication in the content and in a few cases I noticed they took the same text from an earlier book and just changed wording some. But I have to be fair here too; even in cases where they did that, it seemed to me that a lot of the photos were different than the ones in the earlier book.
This is likely the last major collecting effort I'll undergo. I really shouldn't be adding more physical burdens to my life. I successfully overcame my comics, sports cards, and computer games addictions, and when those itches relapse they can be satisfied with digital copies that are inexpensive and require no physical space. I've been selling off those physical collections and donating the proceeds to charity. Perhaps I'll eventually do the same with the Squadron Signal stuff, though it will take time to finish collecting and reading them all. In the meantime, I'll post a few notes and reviews here and there and who knows, maybe it'll help other collectors.
Resources
Official web site of Squadron. Current brand owner Brandon Lowe is keeping the faith.
David Doyle wrote a bunch of the Squadron Signal books and his website has a great list with cover images of almost all the books Squadron published.
