Considered by many to be the finest piston-engined fighter aircraft ever to take to the skies, the P-51 Mustang is legendary among aviation aficionados and modelers alike, and needs little introduction in this “first look” at Tamiya’s exquisite rendition of the defining Mustang variant, the P-51D.

Riding on the tremendous popularity of its 1/32 Scale Aircraft series thus far, Tamiya once again ups the ante with the introduction of the P-51 series. As with their Zeros, Phantoms, and Spitfires, Tamiya has clearly engineered their tooling to crank out Mustang variants other than just the “-D.”

Well, here we are again and in Ross McMillen’s case, it appears to be no rest for the weary. These new offerings are designed as direct replacements for the kit supplied weaker plastic landing gear and as always, they appear to be of excellent quality. Again, crisply cast with just minor cleanup required readies them for paint and installation. Many thanks to Ross for the review samples. This months’ list of products follows:

Any student of the Pacific War will be familiar with Japan’s use of thousands of conventional aircraft – fighters, bombers, trainers and nearly every other type flown by her Army and Naval Air Forces – into “Special Attack” weapons: the Kamikazes. What is less understood is Japan’s development and use of purposely designed suicide weapons. Author Steven Zaloga is well known for his extensive writing on the subject of military fighting vehicles. In this Osprey New Vanguard edition, he as done a superb job of highlighting all the various types of air, sea and land weapons used by the Japanese Army and Navy “Tokko” (special attack) units.