The Portuguese Air Force might have been modest in size before the jet-age, but certainly was rich in the variety of fighter airplanes they flew. Their fighter aircraft inventory included French, British and American designs, some of them acquired and pressed into service through very colorful circumstances!

The book has chapters for each aircraft type in detail, including an introduction to the aircraft type and their service in the Portuguese Air Force, before having a section on camouflage and markings for the given aircraft being depicted in the chapter. After the section on camouflage styles and markings, the main feature of each chapter follows: numerous and gorgeous color profiles (sometime even 3-view) of different aircrafts, next to a historical picture of the airplane.

History

Enough has been written on the Lancaster that I’ll just cover 617 Squadron with a link from the Royal Air Force web site. It is quite an interesting history and for me very informative as other than the “Dambuster” raid I knew very little about this squadron.

The Kit

Upon opening the box you are presented with a lot of plastic! 16 grey injected plastic sprue of various sizes and 5 sprue of clear, an 8 page fold out instruction sheet and a large, well printed decal sheet make up this kit. The plastic is cleanly molded with recessed and raised detail and not much flash to deal with. The clear parts are very clear with crisp detail and the decals look great and in register.

Once again, extreme appreciation and thanks to Ross at SAC for sending us another of your expansive line of metal landing gear, and thanks also to IPMS USA leadership for sending it to me.

And a special note on SAC customer service: Ross’ manufacturing team noted they had some “short shots” on their nose gear, whereby the axle itself was missing on one side. Ross offers a replacement to anyone who purchased the set with this minor defect, free of charge. GREAT service! This review set was one of those, and I noted it only when I opened the package.