History

An Essex-class carrier commissioned in 1943, she set more records than any other Essex Class carrier. The Lexington was the oldest working aircraft carrier in the United States Navy when decommissioned in 1991. The Lexington was originally named the USS Cabot but while final construction was being completed at Massachusetts’ Fore River Shipyard word was received that the original carrier named USS LEXINGTON, CV-2, had been sunk and the new carrier’s name was changed to LEXINGTON. The nickname ‘Blue Ghost’ came about due to the Japanese claiming to have sunk the ship 4 times.

This is the fifth set of 1/72 decals from AOA Decals and the second set that I am reviewing. The decals look very nice, clear, and in-register. They are printed by Cartigraf of Italy and work very well. I was very impressed with the ease and smoothness with which they were able to be applied. They came off the sheet well and I was able to move them into place once I got them on. They reacted well with Microset and Microsol making the decals appear as if they were painted on.

There also needs to be a special note about their instruction sheets. There were eight 8 1/2 x 11 sheets detailing everything you would want to know to build one of these options. The profiles were in color and easy to understand. You can tell that a lot of work and research went into this. It’s really nice to see a company put this much care into a product.

The options included in this set are:

The Horten Ho 229 is one of the most striking aircraft designs to emerge from World War II. It was a German fighter/bomber prototype designed by the Horten brothers in response to Hermann Göring's call for a light bomber that could meet a 3x1000 requirement. Meaning that it could carry 1,000 kilograms of ordinance a distance of 1,000 kilometers at 1,000 kilometers per hour. Because only jet powered airframes could meet the speeds necessary to fulfill the requirement for the cruising speed the design became the first flying wing design to be powered by jet engines.

Zoukei-Mura first released a kit of this interesting aircraft in 1/32 and that kit is still an extremely popular masterpiece of design. However, they have recently been redesigning and releasing some of their 1/32 scale kits in 1/48 scale. The Horten HO 229 is their latest release in this series and it is the first new 1/48 scale HO 229 since the Dragon releases in the early 1990s.