The Grumman Tigercat was the epitome of WWII US-designed, twin-engined fighters, and was an exceedingly heavily armed aircraft for its size, either for the fighter or strike role. As a night fighter, it shared similar attributes with its Air Force cousin, the P-61 Black Widow, not the least of which was a reduction of its built-in armament as it evolved. As with the Widow, the Tigercat eventually dispensed with its four original 50 caliber machine guns, keeping its remaining four 20mm cannon (necessitated by the installation of its nose-mounted radar, thus displacing the nose-mounted 50s). The 20mm barrels are represented by these Quickboost replacements.

When you look at any of Master Model’s brass gun barrels, you always marvel at what you see. The detail is remarkable regardless of the scale, and the price is hard to believe because it is so low. One of the things that always bothersed me in German WWI aircraft, almost as much as rigging, was annealing and rolling that stupid cooling jacket on Spandau machine guns. And when I finally get it rolled, I had to join it somehow. Soldering is supposed to be how you do it, but I have yet to be successful. So, I ended up with a very soft brass roll that was barely held together on the bottom by superglue. It was guaranteed, at some time during the build, to get dented or just plain squashed. Master Model comes to the rescue with one-piece, turned and perforated cooling jackets and exquisite muzzle and flash suppressor, plus a gun barrel that cannot be duplicated by stretched sprue or brass rod or plastic rod.

Spoiler alert – if you don’t want to know what I think, go to the next paragraph. This is THE only book you will need to own for reference on the P-39 Airacobra. Printed on high quality gloss paper, this paperback book is printed on A5 size with 160 pages chock full of information. Modelers will love the information included in this book.

The very first thing you will notice upon opening the book is four view drawings of the P-39F and Q in 1/48th scale and the P-39Q in 1/32nd scale. If you build 1/72nd scale, fear not – there are plenty of 72nd scale drawings throughout the book. OK, 1/144th scale guys, there are drawing in the book for you as well.