Opening the Box

Wow was it Christmas or what? This is a smaller armored vehicle in the big picture of things, but there is no doubt it is a big kit, and it is stuffed with sprues. The box is 22” by 13 ¾” by 5 5/8 “. Nope it is not going to fit in the mailbox. There is a single hull piece with 141 sprues (95 of which are the 190 Track blocks in a separate bag bundled in the hull along with the track components), So a rough sprue parts count drives this number up to over 1,105 individual parts. Also included are the Side skirts, clear parts and the copper tow cable and PE parts. Also included is an optional metal gun barrel.

So, if you thought because it’s bigger means less parts your build experience will be just like a well contented 1/35 kit. Nope not a snap-tite kit for sure. However, because the parts are larger, the detail is well executed and crisp with almost no flash whatsoever. The sprue gates and risers are larger so there will be more cleanup

This book provides an overview of the victory markings painted on the fins and rudders of the planes of the German day fighter and night fighter aircraft between 1939 and 1945. It demonstrates how these were applied in reality through the profiles of nineteen pilots, including some of the most emblematic pilots of the Luftwaffe: Hans Troitzsch, Johannes Gentzen, Frank Liesendahl, Wilhelm Balthasar, Otto Bertram, Joachim Müncheberg, Karl-Heinz Koch, Kurt “Kuddel” Ubben, Felix-Maria Brandis, “Fiffi” Stahlschmidt, Franz-Josef Beerenbrock, Heinrich Setz, Walter “Gulle" Oesau, Max-Hellmuth Ostermann, Heinrich Bartels, "Fritz" Dinger, Martin Drewes, Egmont zur Lippe-Weissenfeld and Ludwig Meister.

Chapters include:

I found this interesting and decided to share...

From Wikipedia: “The Katyusha multiple rocket launcher is a type of rocket artillery first built and fielded by the Soviet Union in WWII. Multiple rocket launchers such as these deliver explosives to a target area more intensively than conventional artillery, but with lower accuracy and requiring a longer time to reload.

They are fragile compared to artillery guns, but are cheap, easy to produce, and usable on any chassis[ A Chevrolet 7107 truck, for instance]. The Katyushas of World War II, the first self-propelled artillery mass-produced by the Soviet Union,were usually mounted on ordinary trucks. This mobility gave the Katyusha, and other self-propelled artillery, another advantage: being able to deliver a large blow all at once, and then move before being located and attacked with counter-battery fire. Katyusha weapons of World War II included the BM-13 launcher, light BM-8, and heavy BM-31.