If you want to make life a little easier when masking and painting canopies and wheels, you may want to check out the line of masks produced by Eduard. This particular set is made for the Hobby Boss A-4E (kit 81764), and provides masks for the windscreen, canopy, and wheels/tires. The precut masks are easy to use, so modelers with a little experience placing items in exact locations will have no issues with this set.

After seeing the decals provided at the IPMS Nationals last year, I decided that I needed to add an A-4E Skyhawk to my stash, and being a relatively small plane, 1/48 scale seemed appropriate. Hobby Boss had recently released their kit of the E model, so it was an easy decision when I saw one on the Squadron table. My late father in law was a Naval Aviator, and he flew some A-4 missions in Vietnam, including Iron Hand, so this will a bit of a tribute to him once built.

Kari Stenman has authored, or co-authored, aviation books for the past 49 years. He ran his own publishing company in Finland, focusing on Finnish Aviation History. Many of them were in his Suomen Ilmavoimien Historia series that were originally in Finnish only, but later re-released with Finnish and English text. including:

As WWII started going towards its end and the Germans were backed into a corner, they came up with some interesting ideas to try and turn the tide of the war around. Like the Japanese Kamikaze group, the German Kriegsmarine came up with the Sprengboot Tornado. The thought was to take two of the large floats from a Ju-52 Floatplane and add 7-800kg of explosives and provide power with the V-1’s pulsejet engine. The theory was to get the boat up to speed of 53 mph having a pilot guide the ship and when close the pilot would take an attached boat or just bail out while the Tornado was remotely guided to hit the target. One of these was built and tested for sea trials but was destroyed as the allies overtook Europe. MikroMir has produced a kit of this very unusual subject in large 1/35 scale so let’s look in the box.