Paratroopers have been regarded as elite group of soldiers since their inception. Generally the requirements and physical demands were higher and many of the missions that were assigned to them were high risk, thus the elite status. In this book the author takes a comparative look at the British Paratrooper vs. the German Fallschirmjager in the Mediterranean 1942-43.

The book starts off with a organizational look at the two units. The requirements for soldiers that wanted to join these units is explained along with the operational tactics used by each. There are three operations covered where these two units were engaged with each other. Two of the operations were in North Africa and one in Italy. There is an excellent narrative that describes each action along with period photographs and color maps that show the movements of the units during the operation. The book concludes with an analysis of the two units and the lessons learned by both.

A rather large box arrived from the Review Corp helper the other day, containing several car kits and one airplane. The boxes all were the same to me. These are cars and to be honest, other than helping a nice lady sell off her late son’s collection, I know nothing about cars. I am however learning a large amount of information from them. This kit had a lot more weight to it than all the others and I wanted to know why. Was it the two metal axles, additional parts, super detail stuff that added to the weight? I had to know!

We all know the story of Monogram and Revell becoming one entity. I thought that most of the Monogram line was re-kitted using the 85- as an identifier. However, I also thought Monogram kits were all 1/24 and only Revell kits in 1/25. This is an 85- numbered kit but in 1/25 so maybe my assumptions were wrong. Either way, this is a really nice kit.

Aerobonus, a new company (new to me, anyway) under the Aires umbrella, has come up with a novel approach for providing flight crew for modelers who want to add a little more life to their aircraft. In these new, very highly detailed sets, the ejection seats are molded with the pilots in them, eliminating the usually imperfect fit of trying to place pilots into empty seats.