Brengun has come out with a spiffy idea for making your US Navy 1/144 carrier-based aircraft base look even better. It’s a set of PE tie down anchors for the carrier deck.

The tie downs in this set are the “older” cross style. The newer ones, on newer ships are star type. The original tie down anchors on wooden deck carriers looked kind of like a grating which ran from one side of the deck to the other. I found pictures of these with B-25s tied down on the Hornet for the Doolittle Raid.

When the Navy went to angle deck carriers, they had a steel deck. The tie downs were the cross type. They were painted black, and later yellow. There’s a picture below of me standing on the deck of the USS America in 1996, on the ship’s last cruise. The tie downs are cross type, painted black.

Later carriers used the star type, painted yellow, and later white.

Quickboost provides you with a Su-9 Fishpot nose mounted data probe and a wing mounted pitot tube consisting of two parts. Of note is the re-sealable packaging that Quickboost uses that makes the parts easy to review and then stuff back into the package securely. There supplied two-step instructions address the installation of the wing pitot tube mount.

Quickboost has molded the pitot tubes perfectly in light grey resin with no apparent bubbles. The Quickboost pitot tube provide you with no mold seams to sand off on these tiny parts along with the superior detail. You may note that both Quickboost parts are longer then their corresponding Trumpeter parts. They look fine to me, but you may wish to check them against photos.

This is another of the In Action series of books from Squadron Publications, serving as a follow-up and addition to the previous two versions in In Actions 5 and 65 by other authors. This version includes many pictures not previously included, along with lots of color photos.

Naturally, my eye was initially drawn to the book by the full cover shot of the VF-111 F-4B in their early markings. And, having developed a love/hate relationship with the aircraft after working on the F-4 for over 15 years in the Air Force, I had to give it a look.

Designed by Swedish aerospace company Saab, the S35E Draken is a reconnaissance version of the original fighter Draken. The Draken was manufactured by Saab between 1955 and 1974 it was built to replace the Saab J28 Tunnan and Saab 32 Lansen. However to this date Draken’s have been retired from military service.

There are roughly 117 parts in the kit totaling 9 sprues with very few parts not being used. The decals provided allow you to make your plane either the 11-02 or 11-16 version. Most decals provided are not used (decals 17-35). There is no armament with this kit. The fuselage comes in two halves (top and bottom), they fit together really nicely. The one thing I noticed immediately was the nice panel lines that this kit has. There are only 13 steps to this kit but that’s because two steps have a large amount of pieces to glue on.

The cargo plane probably best known for its use during the Normandy Invasion is one of the best known aircraft in the world. Used by the Allies, including the Soviets and even by the Japanese, these planes continued service as passenger aircraft and cargo lifters throughout the world and some are still flying today.

Recently Airfix replaced its old mold of this kit with a new, state of the art version. The first one came with D-Day markings and a ski equipped version. This kit is the second version and covers a couple civilian aircraft, one serving with the British Overseas Airways Corporation during the war and one with Dan Air Services Ltd. out of England during the mid 50’s. They have also released a 3rd version with British SEAC markings that comes with their new Jeep kit as cargo.