History Brief

The USS Indianapolis is a ship potentially more famous for her loss than her life. On July 30, 1945, after delivering components for the first atomic bomb, the Indianapolis was hit by two torpedoes from the HIJMS I-58. Her loss was not discovered before August 2nd, after many of her survivors met grisly ends at the hands of the elements and constant shark attacks.

The Portland-class cruiser was launched in 1931 in the post-Washington Naval Treaty world. Envisioned as an improvement on the Northampton class, the Portlands featured a lower tripod forward mast and improved protection. The Indianapolis had a busy wartime career, earning ten battle stars for her service. She also saw extensive modification through her life, losing much of her upper works to the torch to make room for additional AA guns.

Quickboost now offers a 1/48 scale three-piece resin ejection seat to replace the nine-part injection-molded seat found in the Trumpeter Sea Hawk kit, or the resin one found in the Classic Airframes kit. The multi-part ejection seat found on the sprues in Trumpeter’s kit builds into a nice, but somewhat unconvincing, replica of what you would see in the prototype. The resin seat in the Classic Airframes kit is much nicer, but requires the modeler to add PE belts to the seat, and the kit is now out of production. The Quickboost seat offers superior detail than what’s provided in either detail set, plus it includes nicely molded safety belts (the photos below show the level of delicate detail molded into the parts). The Quickboost seat also appears to be better proportioned. In the comparison photo below, the Quickboost seat (on the right) exhibits superior detail over that found in the Trumpeter kit’s seat (on the left).

Thank you to the wonderful folks at Casemate Publishers and to the IPMS Reviewer Corps for allowing me to review these two very timely detailed volumes describing the He-219. The Heinkel 219 Uhu was a highly effective but under-utilized Luftwaffe night fighter, with a variety of innovations including obliquely firing guns and the first operational ejection seats. The two Kagero monographs described here provide an excellent resource for any modeler constructing and replicating this extraordinary aircraft.