Great Wall is a company new to me. I have seen their wonderful P-61 in a much larger scale and was impressed. This kit of the Avro Vulcan B.2 is equally impressive, especially considering the small scale.

Upon opening the box, I was Impressed with the packaging. Everything was either wrapped in plastic or foam paper. The fuselage is broken in half horizontally. I really liked the one-piece intakes that fit perfectly. In fact, every piece on this kit fits beautifully. No filler was needed at all.

Due to locating pins in the wings, they snapped together perfectly. This was the best fitting kit I have ever built.

I didn’t forget to add a nose weight before closing the fuselage. The kit includes an instrument panel and two pilots which I didn’t put in, as they cannot be seen thru the tiny windscreen.

1/24th scale, molded in “WRX” mica blue, black, clear and chrome; includes window masking templates, photo etched parts on an adhesive backing, and metal hood brace. The kit makes one version.

History and Research

The Subaru BRZ (B=boxer enginer, R=rear wheel drive, Z=last letter in the alphabet) is a result of a joint collaboration between Toyota and Subaru. It was designed as a world car and is known by the names Subaru BRZ, Toyota GT86, and the Scion FR-S. They are all powered by a flat “boxer”-style 4-cylinder engines in all models and is engineered by Subaru. Most of the rest of the development of the car was the work of Toyota.

The Stalingrad counteroffensive (Operation Uranus) showed the Red Army's urgent need for mobile heavy guns. The firepower of Soviet tanks, both motorized and with infantry units, was not sufficient to deal with German pillboxes and fortified buildings. In November, 1942, the development of a heavy self-propelled gun armed with 152.4mm ML-20 gun-howitzer was begun as project name KV-14, and the first prototype, Object 236, was completed in 25 days. Using the KV-1S tank chassis, mass production of the SU-152 started in mid-February, 1943, and about 700 were produced until superseded by the ISU-152 in December, 1943. During combat, it was found that the SU-152 was a great anti-tank gun that could take out a Tiger or Elefant tank destroyer with its 107 pound HEAT projectile. During the Battle of Kursk, the lack of roof vents led to crews passing out, so a later production model added vents and a hull machine gun.