The Kit and Assembly

The kit consists of 23 gray resin parts, 3 injection molded plastic rotor blades, and two sheets of photo etch metal, altogether containing approximately 50 parts, of varying size and complexity. None of the parts is named, but most are identifiable. One thing to remember is that this is not a kit designed for beginners, and wondered while I was assembling the kit whether it was really intended for experienced modelers. There are a LOT of parts to this kit, especially considering its size, and you will have to be very careful cutting the PE parts off of the sheet, as they will do their best to escape. Some are so small that if some reason they should become lost, they will be gone forever. Use of a magnifying glass is highly recommended, both for assembly and for looking for parts on the floor.

First Impression

ICM Holding, a Ukrainian-based company known for outstanding quality, has produced excellent figure kit with this brand-new tooling release of a Roman Centurion from the 1^st Century. The box contains one bag containing two gray sprues and a separate black sprue (and bag) for the base. The kit contains a total of 49 parts. The parts are crisply molded and engraved; the detail is outstanding and all parts are flash free. The double-sided assembly guide combines the assembly and painting guidelines.

One very impressive aspect of this kit is that fact that the arms and legs are solid molds and you will not have to worry about filling lots of seems as is typical with many plastic figure kits. In my view, this kit is so close in quality to resin figure models that I believe many in the figure modeling community will really enjoy this model kit.

A very nice bonus is a full-color frameable art print (matching the box art).

The Book

This book provides a lot of information on the P-38L-5-LO. This variant was only marginally different in detail from other P-38’s in the “L” series, so it would probably be useful for anyone wanting detail information on any of the later P-38’s. The book consists entirely of scale drawings in 1/72 and 1/48 scale, a series of captioned color and black and white photos of entire airplanes and details, and a set of color drawings in back. It would serve as a very good reference for anyone wanting to build a model in either of those scales. The detail photos are from existing warbirds or from actual maintenance manuals, and there are even some interior views of the cockpit and engine compartments.

Recommendation

If you are doing a late model P-38 in either of those scales, this book is the one to get. Highly recommended.