This is a beautiful book with very nice illustrations of David Kimble’s cutaways, step-by-step descriptions on how the cutaways are made, and descriptions of the engineering of the vehicles.

David Kimble is in engineer turned illustrator who grew up in Southern California racing, and eventually became known for his cutaway automotive illustrations. In the introduction Kimble states that the purpose of this book is to answer the question “how do you do it”, to which he usually responds “a little at a time”. This book for the first time describes his approach to illustration and the techniques on how his work is done, plus some of the stories behind the illustrations.

Eduard’s BigSin set for Tamiya’s 1/72 Block 50 F-16CJ includes seven sets previously issued individually, creating a wonderful update set for the kit. The set includes resin replacements for the wheels, the ejection seat, the exhaust nozzle and open speed brakes. The set also includes two frets of photo-etch (one for the interior and one for the exterior details), a complete canopy mask set and a fret of prepainted remove-before-flight tags. As the sets were previously released individually, combining them into a single set results in some duplication, which is not a bad thing if you have another Tamiya F-16 kit in the stash.

Background

As described in Crecy Publishing information paper, “What manner of aircraft pioneered airborne radar and anti-submarine warfare, almost replaced the immortal Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, and yet disappeared from the annals of aviation history with not so much as a footnote in most authoritative histories of the WWII? The elusive B-18 bomber.

The very few stories that have appeared since the end of the war invariably spoke of the aircraft in crude and disparaging terms including ‘the bomber that nobody wanted,’ but more than 30 surviving crew members who served aboard the aircraft had no such disparaging words. How could so many people be wrong?

Developed in parallel to the DC-1, the B-18 and it’s obscure development, the handsome B-23 were precisely the right aircraft, at the right time, to help America defeat the serious Axis submarine threat in the Caribbean and train most of the B-17 crews who headed overseas.