Let me begin by stating that the folks at Tamiya did a fantastic job with their release of an F-14A last year in 1/48 scale. The all-new kit is one of, if not the best Tomcat in this scale, with the typical engineering that applies to everything Tamiya produces. With that being said, some modelers want to add just a little something more to their projects, and once again Eduard comes to our assistance with the release of a cockpit set for the Tamiya kit. Everything that you would want or need up front is contained in one package with both resin and photoetched parts being included. I would highly recommend this set to any modeler who feels the need to have the extra detail in their Tomcat’s cockpit.

History

In February 1942, the German Army (Heer) started building forty Sturmpanzer (Assault Tank) on Panzer IV chassis in readiness for the Battle of Kursk. The vehicle carried a 15cm howitzer in a boxed fighting compartment. Another eighty were produced in late 1943. Finally, another 162 were built between May 1944 and March 1945. These were the late production models built on the Panzer IV Ausf. J chassis and this newly tooled kit represents this model.

Iliad Design’s latest 72^nd decal sheet covers 4 Dakotas that flew with the Air National Guard

The Puerto Rican Air Guard is represented by the attractive white over aluminum scheme. This one includes the stars and bars on the fuselage as well as the National Guard badge on the tail. This scheme is from post 1961.

The other three aircraft are all in natural metal finish and date from 1947-1948. We have Virginia, Nebraska and New Mexico National Guards.

The Virginia bird has the legend “The Old Dominion” above the fuselage windows while both the Nebraskan and New Mexican ones have State markings instead of fuselage stars.

All the main markings including Stars and Bars are included.

The Albuquerque club usually has an award for the best New Mexican aircraft and this last scheme would look great on either the Airfix or Italeri kits.