Basic Background

For those of an age, you may well remember the 1979 Disney Studios movie, The Black Hole, its basic premise, in the year 2130, the USS Palomino, while returning to Earth following deep space exploration, comes across a black hole with a considered lost vessel, the Cygnus, hovering on the edge of the black hole. As a part of that movie, the evil robot, Maximillian, serves the antagonist, Dr Reinhardt as his personal bodyguard.

When the reviewer corps received Squadrons B-24J “Dragon and His Tail” kit, I said heck yeah, I’ll do it. By the way, I actually used my training and worked a bunch of sheet metal and other stuff on a B-24 over the years when I was the MX rep for a Museum; Specifically, the Willow run Ford-built “J” model Serial Number 44-48781that was, until recently, at Barksdale AFB and is now at Savannah. I also have Bert Kinsey and Rock Roszak’s B-24 Liberator collaboration with Detail and Scale sitting next to me as I write this.

The iconic Messerschmitt Bf 109 almost doesn’t need an introduction as it is ubiquitous with the WWII German Luftwaffe. The E "Emil" variant was the standard Luftwaffe fighter at the start of the Second World War, and it was also the only single-engined Luftwaffe fighter in use during the Battle of Britain. The “Emil” variant was short-lived as improvements were constant, being replaced by the 109F in 1941.

Scale Aircraft Conversion has produced its famous white metal landing gear for the Messerschmitt Bf 109E-1/E-3/E-4/E-7 in 1/48 scale. As aircraft modelers well know, aircraft models displayed on their landing gear are susceptible to damage from the weight of the model, especially on styrene landing gear.