If you are like me, natural metal aircraft give you the shakes. But they are so awesome looking and the color schemes are fantastic, so when the KittyHawk Model F-101 came out, I could not resist. Let say a few things up front. If you are looking for review saying things are silly or ridiculous with the kit or how the third minor inlet was left off, you might want to go elsewhere. I am not going to use childish language in a review of the kit. On the other hand, if you want to find out how it fits, how to correct some issues, and how to get some paint on the plane, let’s dive in together.

KittyHawk’s kit comes on seven light-gray styrene sprues which have great surface detail, however, there are large sprue gates, and the plastic is fairly soft. In the box there are also kit decals, a photoetch seat, and a clear sprue. Looking at the parts breakdown, more variants are definitely coming. There are also several options for the modeler:

Dragon Models offers a complete lineup of the Pz.Kpfw. III family tree in 1/35 scale, including several kits released in this past year alone. The subject of this review is the Pz.Bef.Wg. III Ausf J from their Smart Kit series. Pz.Bef.Wg., short for Panzerbefehlswagen, identifies the vehicle as a specialized command tank, containing long range radios.

The Pz.Bef.Wg. III Ausf J

The Panzer III was a medium-class tank that, at the outbreak of WWII, was designed to be the primary platform of the all-conquering panzer divisions. With the advent of more heavily armored and up-gunned enemy tanks, the role of the Panzer III became secondary to that of the Panzer IV, and its production finally ceased in 1943.

This is not the first turret conversion I’ve dealt with for the ubiquitous Russian T-72 tank in 1/35^th scale. Dragon Models, which was one of the first companies to come out with something resembling a real T-72 tank in this popular scale, even at the time realized that the turret was an extremely elusive shape to model accurately, and almost immediately released their own resin revision. I don’t pretend to be an expert on modern Soviet armor, so this review is going to be mostly based on my observations about this specific kit and what it offers.

This specific version of the turret depicts the T-72 turret as it was modified in preparation for the stand-off armor bricks that were to be added later. It featured the much thickened front cheeks as well as the moving of the smoke grenades to a plate on the left side of the turret. It also has passive armor “blanketing” over a good portion of the turret – an especially hard modification to scratch yourself.