Bob Sanchez has been in or around the military all his life. He was an "Air Force Brat" and credits his mom with getting him addicted to plastic modeling and airplanes. At the age of 10, Bob's mom came home with a Revell 1/32 scale P-51B and signed him up for the Military Book Club. From that point on, he was hooked! Bob Sanchez was in the USAF for 11 years as an Airborne Instrumentation/Telemetry Technician and flew on the Advanced Range Instrumentation Aircraft as a Chief Flight Examiner. He finished his enlistment with Project Speckled Trout as a Flight Test Engineer performing airborne Comm/Nav testing on the Air Force Chief of Staff airplane. He has over 1,200 flight hours in numerous aircraft to include the C-135C, EC-135E, EC-18B/D, E-9A, NASA 757, F-16C, F/A-18B, King Air, MH-53 Pave Low, Bell Jet Ranger and OH-6 Cayuse. Currently Bob is the Business Development Manager for a major aerospace defense contractor.

These kits have been around long enough now for me to say it’s the best of its kind in this scale. Since I’ve covered the basics of its construction in a previous review for this site, I’ll focus on details specific to this release. The primary feature of this kit is the inclusion of M-10 rocket or “Bazooka”, tubes. A separate runner of parts contains the tubes and the two types of mounting hardware. Also included are templates to locate the mounting holes on the wings. The quality of these parts is on par with the rest of the kit.

Three different marking options are included on the decal sheet as follows:

One of the latest in Mushroom Model Publications’ White Series, French Bombers of WWII, follows up an earlier volume on French aircraft, 2013’s French Flying Boats of WWII. MMP is calling this book part of their "Rainbow Series." I am guessing that it refers to their large format camouflage and markings set of books in their "White" series that have addressed Bulgaria, Finland, Hungarian, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, and Sweden. This series seems to share a commonality of discussing the specific topic of the evolution of a country's evolution in markings. To that end, this book utilizes many previously unpublished pictures and focuses on individual aircraft and is supplemented with superb color illustrations.

As a recap, we are building up the old Monogram kit and two ICM kits of the B-26B Marauder with ICM’s 1/48^th scale Flak Bait as the main review item. I selected the following schemes for the three kits:

• “Flak Bait”, 322^nd bombardment Group, Spring 1945
• “Hard to Get”, 497^th BS, 344^th BG, Cormeilles France 1945
• “Idiots Delight”, 391^st BG, 575 BS RAF Matching England, August 1944

At the end of Part 1, the fuselages were all together and it was time to finish off the kits.

History

The Island of Malta is strategically located in the center of the Mediterranean Sea, halfway between Africa and Italy, as well as Egypt and Gibraltar. During WWII, the British felt it vital to hold onto the island as a base for both the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force to conduct offensive missions. Despite this, the island was poorly garrisoned during the early part of the War, as the British forces were spread thin across Europe as well as defending the homeland from a potential German invasion. All that could be spared for aerial defense was a handful of Gloster Sea Gladiators, left in storage by the Royal Navy and hastily brought out by the RAF in 1940. These few airframes were the sole defense for Malta for several weeks while the Italian air force conducted bombing raids against the islands, and they soon entered legendary status with the nicknames Faith, Hope, and Charity.