History

The 109F variant was the 2nd major design change for this aircraft. It first appeared in 1940, the -2 in April of 1941. The -2 was similar to the -1 with the exception of a better cannon firing through the nose (mg 151/15).

The Kit

A snap together kit!!! Now, that is my speed! This kit comes in an end-opening box. You are provided with two sprues of grey injected plastic, one clear single-piece canopy, one matte finish decal sheet with markings for two aircraft, and the instructions. The detail was crisp with fine panel lines and no flash. No noticeable pin or sink marks, either.

Part 1 – History

The Fokker Eindecker is the classic prototype of the single-seat, purpose-built fighter aircraft. Probably everyone knows the basic story, which is simplified and almost mythical in content. The French aviator Roland Garros had deflector plates bolted to the back side of the prop on his Morane-Saulnier monoplane and began shooting up German observation craft in 1915. This drove the German High Command nuts and they were at a loss about how to deal with this. Or so the story goes. It appears that the bullets striking the deflector plates on Garros’ prop knocked it loose enough to kill the engine somehow and he had to put down behind German lines. The Germans asked Anthony Fokker to come up with an answer and he quickly whipped out a synchronizing mechanism, fitted it to a Parabellum LMG-14 machine gun on his Fokker A-II observation craft and, voilâ, the first fighter was born.

It wasn’t too long ago that there were basically three manufactures of plastic figures available through common sources. Through them, you could usually cobble together a crew for a German tank, but if you wanted some figures for a US armored vehicle, you were stuck with some very static poses that came with the kit. Dragon broke new ground with the release of their US tank crew several years ago, and they were leaps ahead of anything on the market, but still some pretty basic poses.

Now we have MiniArt among a host of new producers that is not only providing some great new figures, but in poses that we couldn’t even dream about! This release of a US Tank crew in “close combat” is no exception, and provides five figures, all in various poses.

In The Box