The Bucker Bu131D “Jungmann,” which means “young man” or “cadet”, was developed in the 1930s as a light primary trainer for all Luftwaffe pilots. Extremely small and agile, it was mostly steel tubing with a fabric covering, and proved so popular that over 200 are flying in private hands to this day. I even found an entire scene in the European “Tintin” series of comics which shows this durable little aircraft in the less-than-capable hands of Thomson and Thompson, twin detectives (see the Tintin adventure “The Black Island”). This model set offers not only the aircraft itself, but a pilot and a couple of handlers to go with it.

The Enrico Toti (S506) was the lead boat in its namesake class of Italian submarines. The keel was laid in 1965, she was launched in 1967, commissioned in 1968, and was decommissioned in 1992. In 2005 the boat was moved by land to Milan, where she resides today in the Museum of Science and Technology “Leonardo da Vinci”. Called “pocket submarines” due to their diminutive size, the boats of this class were intended only to operate in the Mediterranean Sea, mostly to patrol the Channel of Sicily and participate in NATO exercises. The boat is 151.6 feet long, has a 15.4 feet beam, and has a draught of 18.7 feet. The two Fiat diesels provided power to the diesel-electric drive that would propel the boat at 14 knots surfaced, or 15 knots submerged. The crew consisted of 4 officers and 22 sailors, and she was armed with four 21-inch torpedo tubes.

Bottom Line Up Front: This most recent addition to the Osprey Men-at-Arms Series does its best to make sense of a confusing subject, to the Japanese civil wars of the 1860s and 1870s period. It is well illustrated and provides rudimentary information that is fairly easy to understand.