F6F Hellcat in detail & Scale

Author Bert Kinzey graduated from Virginia Tech in 1968 with a degree in Business Administration. Upon graduation, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U. S. Army and was sent to the Army’s Air Defense School at Fort Bliss, Texas.

During his eight years as an officer, Bert commanded a Hawk guided missile battery just south of the DMZ in Korea. Later he originated, wrote, and taught classes on the air threat, military air power, and air defense suppression at Fort Bliss.

It was during this time that he did his first writing. Bert was dissatisfied with the existing manuals and other materials available for his classes, because they were inaccurate and incomplete. As a result, he wrote his own reference books and other publications. Although he intended for these to be used only in his classes, they were soon placed on the Army’s official publication list and distributed throughout the military.

In 1976, Bert resigned from active duty, but his reputation for being knowledgeable about all aspects of military air power soon led to his taking a civilian position as a subject matter expert on the air threat and world airpower with the Department of Defense. His primary responsibility was to develop a new program to teach the proper identification of both friendly and enemy aircraft, so as to insure the destruction of hostile aircraft and the safety of friendly aircraft. This was the first such program in the world to feature dynamic simulation. Bert has also flown with active, Reserve, and National Guard squadrons on training missions to observe the conduct and procedures of air-to-air and air-to-ground combat. As both an officer and a civilian, Bert often briefed military and political leaders of the United States and other nations on subjects related to air power, the air threat, and air defense.

While he was working for the Department of Defense, Bert started Detail & Scale, a part-time business to produce a new series of books on military aircraft. The Detail & Scale Series of publications was the first to focus on the many details of military aircraft to include cockpits, weapon systems, radars and avionics systems, differences between variants, airframe design, and much more. These books became so successful that Bert resigned from his position with the Department of Defense and began writing and producing books full time. Soon, other well-known aviation writers began writing books for the Detail & Scale Series, so Bert became both an author and an editor. Later Bert added aircraft carriers to the Detail & Scale Series, and he also began a second series called Colors & Markings. Each book in this series focused on a specific aircraft type and illustrated the paint schemes and markings of every unit that had flown that aircraft. Bert also produced a book for McGraw-Hill on the Gulf War entitled “The Fury of Desert Storm: The Air Campaign.” In January 2002, Bert produced his one-hundredth aviation publication. 

Bert has always taken many of the photographs that appear in his Detail & Scale Series publications, and he believes that whenever possible, it is best that the author take photos in order to precisely illustrate what is being discussed in the text and captions. His has also done photography for other books, magazine articles, websites, and for research and publicity that has been provided to clients. He owns one of the most extensive collections of aviation photographs in the world. Over the years, Bert has given numerous presentations and speeches about military air power, the air threat, military aviation history, and aircraft types, working these into his busy schedule of writing, editing, doing research, taking photographs, and consulting.

In June 2004, health issues caused Bert to retire from his work, and his two series of aviation books came to an end. But in 2011, the Detail & Scale website was created at www.detailandscale.com, and a Detail & Scale Facebook page was also begun. By the end of 2013, Bert had completed the first new title in the Detail & Scale Series in almost ten years, and more books were planned. Initially, these new titles were made available in digital formats, but in 2017, printed versions for titles in the Detail & Scale Series were also added. This new venture was made possible through a partnership with Rock Roszak.

Bert currently lives in Blacksburg, Virginia, with his wife Lynda. They have two children and five grandchildren.

Chris Sakal grew up surrounded by aviation. His father, an Air Force air traffic controller, was himself an aviation enthusiast, scale modeler, and skydiver. So from an early age, Chris not only went to aviation museums, both large and small, but also went to many airshows to see a wide variety of modern and vintage aircraft. Long before he could read or write, Chris could not only identify U. S. aircraft, but foreign aircraft as well.  

While living in Biloxi, Mississippi, Chris got to visit the Naval Aviation Museum at Naval Air Station, Pensacola, Florida, and he also got to see the training carrier USS LEXINGTON, AVT-16, which was still in commission at that time. These few visits fueled an enduring passion for naval aviation. Later Chris began reading accounts of famous Navy aces such as David McCampbell, Alex Vraciu, and Eugene Valencia and their exploits over the Pacific during World War Two. It was during this time that Chris received his first Detail & Scale book, the original issue on the F6F Hellcat with its interview with Captain David McCampbell, the Navy’s all-time leading ace.

Throughout high school Chris continued to build scale models and have an active interest in aviation history and writing. For a while he seriously considered a career as a naval aviator, however a year after graduation, he decided to enter trade school to become an aircraft mechanic. In 2004, Chris earned his FAA Airframe and Powerplant certificate and began working at the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center as an airframe mechanic. Over the next twelve years, Chris gained experience on most of the aircraft types that were worked on at the depot. These included the B-52H Stratofortress, E-3 Sentry, and the KC-135 Stratotanker.  

In 2010, Chris visited Pensacola for the first time in eighteen years. The museum, now known as the National Naval Aviation Museum, had grown exponentially over the years, and Chis was even more enthusiastic about the museum and their effort to preserve and present the history of Naval aviation to the public. Following that visit he became a Lifetime Member of the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation, and in 2011, he began sponsoring the Grumman F11F Tiger on display at the base’s main gate.

Chris continued to pursue his education, and in May of 2013, he graduated with honors from Oklahoma City Community College with a Liberal Studies degree. In the years since getting Detail & Scale’s F6F Hellcat book, Chris has gone from being a reader to an active contributer, visiting museums and taking photographs for various Detail & Scale projects. 

Chris currently lives in Oklahoma and works at the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center doing structural repair for the B-52H Stratofortress. He is active in scale modeling and with the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation.

The illustrator, Colonel Richard S. “Rock” Roszak, is the son of immigrants who came to America from a war-ravaged Europe. He grew up in Staunton, Virginia, and graduated from Virginia Tech in 1971 as a member of the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets. He was commissioned into the United States Air Force where he earned his navigator wings and accumulated over 2,000 flying hours, mostly in B-52D/F/G and C-135 aircraft, over a 27-year active duty career. His staff tours included time as a special assistant to the Air Force Chief of Staff, liaison officer for strategic aircraft programs to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, and as the Senior Technical Advisor to the Special Ambassador for assistance agreements to demilitarize strategic nuclear launch vehicles of the former Soviet Union. His final active duty tour was as the Commander, Air Force ROTC Detachment 875 at Virginia Tech, and during his tenure the detachment led the nation in earned scholarships and grew from the 36th to the 8th largest ROTC unit in the country.

After retiring from the Air Force in 1998, Rock spent 14 years on the staff of the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets, returning to where he began his military career. During those years he established an alumni aviation gallery, which features his artwork of aircraft flown by cadet grads and highlights more than 80 years of military aviation history. An avid modeler in his younger years, he has been a digital artist for over twenty years and has illustrated several books in partnership with his friend, Bert Kinzey. In 2017, Rock’s role at Detail & Scale expanded when he authored one book and co-authored another. He is art director and also responsible for publishing the books in both digital and print formats.. 

Rock currently lives in Blacksburg, Virginia, with his wife, Patty, two daughters, and six grandchildren.