Overview

The Dornier Do335 was a German WWII heavy fighter that had a unique twin engine inline push pull setup that made it the fastest propeller driven German fighter of WWII. The Luftwaffe was desperate to get the fighter into production as soon as possible, but with engine availability problems by the time they got it into the fight there was only a handful of planes available and the war was about over.

It’s amazing how many planes were developed by the Germans that were way ahead of their time. Like the Messerschmitt Me262, the Horton Ho229 flying wing, the V-1 and V-2 rockets along with the Do335 and a few more. With the amount of bombing day and night by the Allies it’s a wonder the Germans got any planes developed at all.

I have always loved the look and lines of the Westland Lysander so when given the chance, I didn’t hesitate to build the profipack kit from Eduard. To be honest I have the older Gavia boxing in my stash but it doesn’t contain all the little extras that Eduard has added over and above the original boxing of the Gavia kit in 2001. From reading reviews of the Gavia boxing there was small issue in the original tool that involved the location of the alignment holes for the wing strut attachment points. On the recommendation of a friend, I compared the molding of Eduard’s Lysander to the original boxing and Eduard have retooled the lower wing pieces to relocate the alignment holes to the correct position. Go team! The rest of the box o’ parts were top notch and included the great Eduard instruction sheet, color painting guide, decals for five different aircraft, pre-painted photoetch, kabuki masks and of course the polystyrene parts.

Thank you to Ginter Books for providing a review copy of their new release, Naval Fighters Number 10, the first of a three volume set covering the Grumman S2F/S-2 Tracker and the WF-2/E - 1 B Tracer. I also appreciate all of those in the IPMS Reviewer Corps, who do the heavy lifting to get the reviews done, from start to finish.

Overview

The Tracker holds a special interest for me beyond my personal enthusiasm for USN aviation, an interest honed after hearing two Navy veterans argue about how effective the aircraft was. Naturally, one was a submarine officer, and the other an S2F aviator. This volume is the first of three projected volumes covering the Tracker, with development, testing, variants and foreign users described.

More metal gear from Ross at SAC. THANKS VERY MUCH for sending IPMS USA another of your expansive line of metal landing gear, and thanks also to IPMS USA leadership for sending it on to me to review.

This is the SAC-standard metal landing gear improvement over the kit plastic. Kinetic’s F-16 series are most excellent, and easy to work with, but the landing gear, being part of the new plastic as well, tends to be a bit “soft”. This SAC set has 11 parts; two main struts, three retraction links, two main gear extension rams, a nose gear and separate nose tire along with a torque link, and the set includes a replacement back bulkhead for the kit main gear well.

Eduard continues to bring out superb sets meant to help modelers detail kits. This set consists of 100 individual instruments meant for 1/32 WWII Luftwaffe planes. There are multiples of each instrument. The printing on the instruments is awesome and clear.

The instructions show the needed folds and the like. This set will require the modeler to research and determine which instrument goes where. These will let you replace or fabricate a new instrument panel easily. To test them, I sprayed a piece of styrene with RLM 66 paint. I then added the instruments and folded them. You’ll note in the pictures that I got a little heavy-handed with the glue. Once attached, I folded and glued the needed instruments flat. This gives them a nice three-dimensional look. Once glued, I flat-coated the instruments and then added a drop of Kristal Kleer to the instruments to look like the glass.