Background

Following the Second World War, the United States Army developed requirements for a modern armored and mobile anti-aircraft platform to deploy with armored and infantry forces. Filling that requirement was the M42 Duster. Based on the M41 Walker Bulldog light tank platform and armed with the Bofors M2A1 dual 40mm anti-aircraft cannon, the M42 became the mainstay of mobile armored anti-aircraft support for both the U.S. Army and Marine Corps from 1953 through the Vietnam War. 3700 Dusters were produced and served with several allied nations in addition to the United States

Thank you to Hong Kong Models for providing an innovative and exceptional kit representing a legendary Royal Air Force aircraft, the first kit in a “Mossie, The Wooden Wonder” series. Thank you also to the IPMS Reviewer Corps staff members who do the hard work behind the scenes, getting us kits to review and publishing our work.

This review is last of a two-part review. In this review you will find a brief build summary and conclusion, followed by detailed build log and reference list.

Build Summary

The most striking aspect of the kit is the stunning one-piece molding of the wing, horizontal tail fins, and both forward and aft fuselage components. I can summarize the importance of this molding approach by saying that I had very little seam filling to do, both because of the minimal number of seams present and the excellent fit in nearly all cases.

The Kitty Hawk AH-1Z was ready for decals.

So, on to WW Decals 48-08. One word of caution; decide which aircraft you want to model BEFORE you paint! Floyd gives you eight different choices of aircraft, and there is something different about the color demarcation lines or non-skid paint or patches of other color paint on each aircraft. I didn’t have that forethought, so the end result was there was one aircraft that I could depict, and that was NO. 41 of HMM-268 (REIN). The sheet also contains two sets of common markings.