Historical Background

This is one of the first historical accounts of the Lend-Lease program designed to aid the Soviet Union in its war against Nazi Germany. The backgrounds are rather confused, because in the late thirties, the Soviets and the Nazis, along with the Italian Fascists, seemed to be working together to dominate nearly all of Eastern Europe. In 1939, The Germans invaded Poland, but they didn’t do it alone. They were aided by the Soviets, who attacked from the east. The Poles resisted, but the Germans and Russians were just too powerful, but for a while, it appeared that the Germans and Russians were allies.

While Tamiya has long been a producer of acrylic model paints, they have recently entered the market of bottled solvent-based paints with a line of lacquer paints with the new “LP” prefix heading.  As of this writing, there are 80 listed “colors” of lacquer paints in the Tamiya catalog, but that total includes such items as Thinner, a Flat Base, 5 Clears plus a Clear Yellow, Clear Orange, Clear Red and Clear Blue, 6 Blacks and 4 Whites. The colors are not labeled with any other specific description, such as US FS (federal stock) number or Luftwaffe RLM number, although the “pearl”, “mica” and metallic colors are primarily directed towards automotive modelers. The complete chart of available colors is available at the Tamiya website, and is being added to regularly. The paints come in 1/3 fl oz (10ml) bottles, the same as their acrylic line, compared to the 1/2 fl oz Model Master and 1/4 fl oz small bottle Testors enamels.

This book was compiled by Richard Marmo, a long time IPMS/USA member. It consists of a collection of 60 images of the photo reconnaissance version of the P-38, both the F-4 and F-5. The “Marmo Method” refers to other books in this series that take you step by step through the techniques used to complete a specific project. As the title says, this is a photo reference gallery of a specific squadron, the 128th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron during a specific time frame, July 1944 to September 1945. This unit sent aircraft where needed and as a result conducted operations over an extensive area of pacific operations.