This is an excellent kit, with extremely fine detail, great fit of the parts, and makes a highly realistic model. It’s not easy getting there however. Be prepared for small, delicate parts, microscopic locating pins, unclear instructions on some part locations, and many separate tiny parts where one would suffice without loss of detail. With a little patience an experienced modeler will enjoy a challenging build resulting in a great model.

Background

Gorkovskiy Avtomobilnij Zavod (GAZ) automobile company was a joint venture with the Ford Motor Company prior to WWII. The GAZ-05-194 Ambulance is one of several Soviet Army vehicles based on the Ford Model A truck, with an additional axle for a 2 ton truck. Captured vehicles were also used by Germany’s Wehrmacht.

Designed by Swedish aerospace company Saab, the S35E Draken is a reconnaissance version of the original fighter Draken. The Draken was manufactured by Saab between 1955 and 1974 it was built to replace the Saab J28 Tunnan and Saab 32 Lansen. However to this date Draken’s have been retired from military service.

There are roughly 117 parts in the kit totaling 9 sprues with very few parts not being used. The decals provided allow you to make your plane either the 11-02 or 11-16 version. Most decals provided are not used (decals 17-35). There is no armament with this kit. The fuselage comes in two halves (top and bottom), they fit together really nicely. The one thing I noticed immediately was the nice panel lines that this kit has. There are only 13 steps to this kit but that’s because two steps have a large amount of pieces to glue on.

“Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, this was their finest hour”. These words, spoken by Winston Churchill on June 18, 1940, braced his island nation for the German aerial onslaught awaiting them just a few short miles across the English Channel. The outcome is, of course, well known as the Royal Air Force repelled the Luftwaffe, but at a terrible cost in lives, mainly from the German bombing campaign that the battle turned into. This same island would become the launching point for the allied bombing raids and the D-day invasion across that same channel four years later. 2015 marks the 75^th anniversary of this epic battle and Airfix has boxed some of the most famous aircraft involved in the battle to commemorate it.