OKB Grigorov is a modeling company headquartered in Bulgaria. They do 3D printing, resin and photo etch items. Their inventory includes complete kits, track sets, figures and detail sets. I have now built two of their resin kits and have found them to be of the highest quality. There is no flash, no huge molding blocks to remove and the detail is very finely executed. Don’t go here looking for another Panzer IV or Tiger kit as they specialize in some rather esoteric subjects.

The subject of this review is their 1/72 scale kit of the U.S. Honest John missile. This was the first missile the U.S. produced capable of delivering an atomic warhead, although it could also carry a conventional one. It was ballistically “guided”, launched from a truck-mounted launching rail and was used by numerous countries, only coming out of the front-line U.S. inventory in 1983.

ICM continues to be prolific with both kits and paint sets. The Acrylic Paint Set for WWII US Navy Vehicles is no exception and consists of six 12ml paint bottles, that are surprisingly not dropper top style, but rather are wide mouthed. The colors include:

• Natural Steel (No. 1025)
• Blue Grey (No. 1032)
• Rubber Black (No. 1039)
• Deck Tan (No. 1055)
• Camouflage Green (No. 1071)
• Varnish Satin (No. 2002)

Painting instructions are on the side of the packaging, stating

This is one of the newer offerings from the Ukraine based company ICM. The Zil-131 has been reboxed many times by ICM. The original tool, however, dates to the 1990s. Considering the age of the tooling, despite some very minor flash, the details are very crisp for a military truck and trailer at this scale. A note on the trailer, I cannot find any information on the trailer, so I do not know if this an older ICM mold or from another manufacturer. The kit comes in a sturdy ICM box. The sprues for the truck and the trailer are packaged in separate cellophane bags. There are two separate instruction sheets in ICM’s typical style with paint callouts in their own brand of acrylic paint. There are decals for two vehicles.

The Stalin tank series was developed in the Soviet Union during WW II to deal with the German Panther and Tiger tanks. It had heavy, well-shaped armor and a powerful 122mm gun that could pierce the frontal armor of nearly any Axis tank at over one thousand yards. Its greatest drawback was that the main gun used two-piece ammunition, which slowed down the re-loading time, thus putting the tank at a disadvantage in a “shoot out” situation.

Every once in a while, a book comes along that you can’t put down. For me, it’s typically a fictional mystery. Hitler’s Miracle Weapons, Volume 2 offers all the suspense of a fiction mystery, except that it’s not. It’s non-fiction, is full of surprising facts, offers clues to mysteries still yet to be solved, and will keep you wanting more.

The use of rockets and rocket-powered flying craft by the Third Reich is not a new discovery, but what were the real intentions in terms of the development and use of these strange and mysterious weapons? Was Wernher von Braun just reaching for the stars? What secrets are still hidden in large underground rocket bunkers in France and Germany? Why are many documents regarding Hitler’s rocket program still classified today? Was there a V-Weapons atomic rocket unit?

If you are curious about any of these questions and many more, this book is an absolute must-read.