During the early 1930’s, the Soviet Union’s military embarked upon a program to produce a massive new tank force capable of defending the vast territories of the Motherland. Tank production was broken down into six “types” of vehicles: amphibious scout tanks (as there was massive amounts of waterways and marshland within the country); light tanks; infantry support tanks; fast (cavalry) tanks; medium tanks; and heavy tanks. The latter were to be produced in smaller numbers (due to their expense and also complexity of production) and utilized for “breakthrough” maneuvers such as engaging large concentrations of enemy tanks, or against hard to dislodge fixed defensive positions unable to be dealt with by lighter armed or armored tank units.

Eduard has combined three wonderful resin sets into a combo set called the BigSin set for the Tamiya F-14A. I would think it would also work with other F-14’s but watch the variant so you could match it to the missile variants. The set comes in an excellent box with a full set of four AIM-54A Phoenix missiles, four AIM-7E Sparrow missiles and four AIM-9G/H Sidewinders with launch rails and seeker head covers. Each set comes with full stenciling and individual instructions in color including the color call outs for painting. Let’s look at the sets individually.

Background

As production ramped up, it was discovered that the T-54-1 Model 1947 had a number of technical issues. This lead to relatively few vehicles being produced, and production ceasing quickly, to be replaced as the problems were sorted out with a modified variant, the Model 1949. This second variant had a different turret configuration than its predecessor, the fender mounted machine guns of the Model 1947 were deleted, and the fender mounted cylindrical fuel tanks (as seen on late model T-34/76 and T-34/85 tanks) were replaced by a rectangular design.

This is the second T-54 kit from MiniArt that I have had the great pleasure of reviewing for IPMS/USA. The first, MiniArt Kit #37003, was of the T-54-1 Model 1947, the first production variant of this important Soviet Cold War warrior. For this review, see here: T-54-1 Review