The newest in Osprey’s Combat Aircraft series is authored by a retired Royal Air Force logistics officer, Chris Goss. Specializing in Luftwaffe air operations, Chris Goss has built an impressive collection of original photographs, interviews, and correspondence with WWII veterans and their families. His aviation photograph collection alone exceeds 50,000 images. This material has been placed into the public sphere in over twenty-three books that Chris Goss has authored, not to mention being a contributor to magazines like Flypast, Aviation News, Fan D’Aviation, and Aerojournal.

Chris Davey provides the side profile color plates as he has for more than thirty titles from Osprey. Chris Davey, living in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, is one of the last traditional aviation airbrush artists in the business.

The PJ Production company from Belgium makes some very nice resin aircraft kits as well as resin aftermarket accessories for aircraft, plus lots of pilot and ground crew figures. This set provides an interesting set of five modern Ground Crew members. This set can be used to upgrade modern aircraft dioramas. These parts are nicely molded in resin, and require very little clean-up.

The instructions show the crew with gray uniforms. In looking through some French aircraft references, I found crew members with intermediate blue colored uniforms. I used this color to provide a better appearance. I am not a figure painter, and these crew members are really small, but I found that different flesh colors on the hands and faces, followed by a light coat of dark gray tint, brought out the details of the faces and the uniforms.

Underwing armament such as bombs are always nice to add to your model. With the plethora of new Russian aircraft models, the abilities to bomb them up has never been better. The GPS guided bombs are quite well known in the West but the Russian equivalents are not as well known. Advanced Modeling has stepped up to plate with their impressive 3D CAD developed products.

The packaging is a self-sealing bag that contains the parts for two KAB-500S Satellite Bombs . There is a small decal sheet for the bombs. Also included are two end caps in photo etch.

The instructions are beautifully printed and attached to card stock packaging. They are written in Russian and English. The drawings are simply beautiful and extremely accurate. The one sheet shows where the decals go.

All the resin parts are in light grey resin with no blemishes or bubbles anywhere. The bomb bodies are separate from the warheads. The instructions show where to cut off the resin pour stubs.

Eduard has produced many different sets of seat belts over the years for many sizes and types of aircraft. Hey also have several different style with the fabric belts and straight photoetch belts. This set is 1/32^nd scale photoetch steel with pre-printed color on one side. The printing is top notch and even includes the required stitching on the belts. There are enough lap and shoulder belts for four separate seats. The detailed instructions show attachment to Bf-190 and FW-190 variants. I had a spare seat for the Trumpeter Me-262 and used that for this demonstration (after painting it).

The shoulder belts are simple in that there are no attachments necessary so you can cut them loose and attach them. I bent them to shape and glued them in place. Please take note that they are “handed” in respect that there is a left and right.

Background

The Saab 29, colloquially called Flygande tunnan (English: "The flying barrel"), was a Swedish fighter designed and manufactured by Saab in the 1940s. It was Sweden's second turbojet-powered combat aircraft, the first being the Saab 21R. Despite its rotund appearance, from which its name derives, the J 29 was a fast and agile aircraft for its era. It served effectively in both fighter and fighter-bomber roles into the 1970s.