The American Civil War was a time of transition, both materially and tactically. On the material side of the equation, metallurgy and weaponry were seeing huge advances. The tactical side struggled to keep pace. When war first broke in 1861 commanders saw the battlefield as a linear environment. That is; long lines of men advancing toward each other to get close enough for the smoothbore weapons of the day to reach maximum efficiency. Technology moved forward with rifled weapons that were more accurate at longer ranges. And coupled with advances in sighting and powder, the ability to reach out and touch your foe at longer ranges meant linear battlefield tactics were becoming obsolete in a deadly way.

The Danton Class represented six pre-dreadnought battleships of the French Navy, built in France between 1907 and 1911. Outclassed before they were completed, and obsolete by the end of World War One, the five surviving ships were relegated to second-line roles by 1920. The ships included the Danton (sunk by U-64 in 1917), Condorcet (Scrapped 1949), Diderot (Scrapped 1937), Mirabeau (Scrapped 1921), Vergniaud (Scrapped 1928), and Voltaire (Scuttled 1938, scraped 1950). The main battery consisted of four 305mm/45 Modèle 1906 guns in two twin gun turrets. The secondary battery consisted of twelve 240mm/50 Modèle 1902 guns in six twin gun turrets. Torpedo boat defense was supplied by sixteen 75mm (3.0”) Modèle 1908 Schneider guns and ten 47mm (1.9”) Hotchkiss guns.

Many or maybe even most know of the Mk.82 bomb- it’s been used for many years as the primary unguided, general purpose low drag bomb. It is convertible to precision guided with a seeker head and fins (which can make it a GBU-12 Paveway II or a GBU-38 JDAM) and this has seen use for many years. To make the bomb available for use at low level bomb runs and not have the plane hit by bomb fragments, the Mk.82 can be fitted with a special tail unit (the Mk. 15) which opens in a cruciform shape and slows the descent enough to allow the plane to be gone when the bomb explodes. This bomb is the Mk.82 with Mk.15 tail unit but it is commonly called the Mk. 82 Snake Eye. And that is what this review is about.

Want an easy upgrade to the new 1/48 Airfix Curtiss P-40B? Step right up to the new Quickboost P-40B exhausst set that provides a beautiful replacement to what is supplied in the kit. The parts are packaged in the standard Quickboost re-closable packaging with a paper stiffener along with the description card. Although these parts are specific to fit the 1/48 Airfix P-40B injected plastic kit, they might be able to be modified so that they would also work for older 1/48 P-40B/C kits (Monogram/Hasegawa/Revell [1964], Academy / Hobbycraft [1996], Bronco [2016], Pegasus, Trumpeter [2004].

History

The Avia B.534 was one of the major achievements of the Czech aircraft industry during the late thirties, and their biplane fighter was as advanced as any European fighter during the middle thirties. Numerous variations were produced, and Eduard has seen fit to produce kits of just about all of them. I have written several reviews of earlier issues of this kit over the past several years, and I refer you to these for a detailed historical account.

The BK.534 variant differed from previous production models in that it was armed with an Oerlikon 20 mm cannon firing through the crankshaft and mounted between the cylinder banks of the Hispano Suiza 12Ycrs. Engine. Two of the fuselage mounted machine guns were removed to save weight. The installation did not prove successful, and later the aircraft were modified by replacing the cannon with another machine gun. Otherwise, the aircraft was nearly identical to the production B.534 Series IV.