The title of this recent issue in Osprey’s Combat Aircraft series is a bit misleading. While it is called He 177 Units of World War 2, this book is much more comprehensive than that. The entire concept, development and deployment of this interesting aircraft are thoroughly covered.

Perhaps the very first paragraph of the book sums up the history of the He 177 best of all: “In the history of aviation, many aircraft, civil and military, have been the cause or subject of tortuous development, heated debate, disagreement, uncertainty, confusion, and often danger.” That pretty much says it all for Heinkel’s heavy bomber!

The Interior kit is includes a lot of steps and refers to what parts/build steps from the main tank kit you need to do to build the whole tank correctly which is a great help and very easy to follow. There are also several parts that will not be used as they are from the other version of the King Tiger with the Henschel turret. Also a very good idea is the amount of painting instruction details given at each of the build stages.

Step 1 through 6 - builds parts of the lower hull and suspension real no issues. I would suggest that the part numbers M2 and M6 (stage 3 and 4) at Stage 1 before the cross supports are installed to easy installation. I also found it would be easy to install P50 incorrectly. The part M8 was also a tight fit. The parts Q10 and Q1 need to carefully be installed.

The Bf-109G-14 was an attempt by the Luftwaffe to standardize fighter production of the G-5/G-6. It failed to do that but the G-14 was a good aircraft and served from 1943 until the end of the war.