Mark Proulx has enthusiastically studied World War II history for decades. During that time, his primary focus has been on the air battles over Europe. He has written a number of books for the Wings of the Black Cross series. Earlier on, that interest drove him to an airline career, where he now works as a training captain for one of North America’s larger regional airlines. In addition, his research has also been directed toward a number of EagleCals produced by Eagle Editions. Mark currently lives in Alberta, Canada where he is married with one daughter.

Steve Deisley is a graphic artist that has recently joined Eagle Editions and provides the color profiles and color scrap details.

OKB Grigorov is a small model company based in Bulgaria that you may not be too familiar with. The company focuses primarily on AFVs, tanks, and naval ships in 1/72, 1/350 and 1/700 scales and they have an extensive list of products available. They produce full resin kits with photo-etch enhancements, as well as resin, photo-etch and white metal conversion pieces for other models.

The kit I reviewed is a 1/700 scale version of the Dutch Walrus class submarine. The Royal Netherlands Navy (RNN) currently operates four submarines. These submarines entered service with the RNN in 1990 and are named after sea mammals (Sea Lion, Porpoise, Dolphin, Walrus). The four boats are currently going thru an upgrade program and the picture on the cover of the model box is a photo of one of the submarines being worked on in a dry dock.

Mikro-Mir is one of the Ukraine’s smaller model manufacturers, specializing in submarines and odd-off aircraft in various scales. As a limited-run company, their models require a certain amount of TLC to achieve optimal results, but their kit selection holds so many strange and otherwise never-modeled items that they’re definitely worth a look. The Soviet-era Triton-1M is one such unique kit.

Looking very much like something out of a James Bond movie, The Soviet Triton-1M, developed in the 1960’s, was a two-man midget submarine intended to be deployed off surface warships for covert reconnaissance missions and sabotage. According to official documents, only 32 were made and they have now been largely decommissioned. It had a “wet” cockpit (non-pressurized) and the crew wore diving gear during missions.