AFV Club released this kit in the fall of last year. This is a variant of their M35x series of 2.5-ton trucks of which the M49A2c 1200 Gallon Fuel truck and the venerable M35A2/3 “Deuce and a half” truck were released.
This is 20th magazine in Ammo’s weathering line. I really like how they take one topic and run about ten articles to explain how to improve your skill on this technique. The magazine is in the larger, A4 European style, since it is published in Spain. There are 75 pages of high gloss color photos broken down into 11 articles. The article’s models range from five armored fighting vehicles, a locomotive, a figure, a submarine and a Sci-Fi Maschinen figure. Each article is six to eight pages long and full of photos detailing the step by step camouflage pattern being used. There is no construction of these kits discussed, it is just all painting and weathering. I noticed that almost all the articles use only Ammo by Mig products. Makes sense since it is their magazine series.
Hauler produces photo-etched and resin upgrade sets for armored fighting vehicles (AFVs), airplanes, cars, railway vehicles, and dioramas. They also produce a few resin kits. Their products are in most of the common scale sizes, 1/72, 1/48, and 1/35, but they also produce a number of other items in common railroad hobbyist scales.
The kit for this review is a small set of photoetch designed to upgrade Revell’s 1/72 T-80 kit. The most obvious pieces of photoetch parts in this kit are designed to replace the plastic grills over the engine and exhaust, as well as the side skirts covering the lower portion of the tank’s hull. However, there are also parts to replace the stowage basket on the turret, the commander’s machine gun mount and ammo box, as well as the headlight mounts and covers. In all, there are 25 parts included on one small sheet of photo-etch and a small set of instructions in the package.
I didn’t know this when I started working on this review model, but the K9 is NOT an indigenous design from Finland, but is a South Korean design intended to replace their aging M109 self-propelled howitzers. Finland has a long history of buying military equipment from abroad and making it their own, and this is a good example. First operational in South Korea in 1999, it was picked up by Finland shortly thereafter. Capable of hurling a 155mm shell some 50+ miles, it certainly has proven to be an upgrade from Finland’s older SP artillery types.
I think most military modelers are pretty familiar with the Normandy landings of June 6, 1944 – the single largest endeavor yet by the human race in history. What a lot of people are not familiar with, however, are the strategic needs that came up immediately in the aftermath – mainly, the daunting task of equipping and supplying the massive Allied forces now on the European mainland. For that, they needed more ports of supply, and those were for the most part still in German hands. This book details the grueling job facing the Allies of wrestling these away from the Axis as quickly and efficiently as possible. The Axis, on the other hand, were just as determined to either hold these positions or destroy their usefulness to the Allies before succumbing.
Modern warfare within the last few decades has seen some remarkable (and sometimes deeply disturbing) changes. For the most part, combat in this century is no longer a matter of state-versus-state conflicts with large standing conventional armies facing off. It has instead devolved into much more local, sometimes tribal skirmishes with small, highly mobile forces either fighting other similar units or challenging large state armies with hit-and-run tactics which are oddly reminiscent of how American citizens fought against the much larger and better equipped British forces during the American Revolution. In a sense, what goes around comes around.
Academy has released an update of their previously released M1A1 kit with the release of a SEP V2/TUSK II kit. Based largely on the M1A2 kit (no. 13298) released in 2016, this version provides some updates. Whereas the previous kit provided three different variants, this kit provides two. They appear to be same vehicle, one with the TUSK add-ons and the other with them removed. The only other difference between the two vehicles is the paint scheme, one is desert sand and the other largely in NATO green. For this build, I prefer the cleaner lines of the traditional Abrams, so I am going to focus on the SEP V2 variant rather than the TUSK.
This informative and well-illustrated book covers early US armor from steam-powered units in the late 1800s, early armored cars used in pursuit of Pancho Villa, and armored cars in action during the Great War. Armored cars were abandoned prior to World War II in favor of more lightly armored scout cars and half-track cars that would see extensive use in World War II.
The T-90 “Standard Tank” was an evolutionary development of the Soviet T-72 tank, the latter being a prime component of Soviet tank forces during the mid-1970’s to the mid 1990’s. The T-72 was also exported widely, including to the armed forces of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. During the 1991 Gulf War, the Iraqi T-72 tanks suffered very badly against such tanks as the U.S. M1 Abrams. Whether this was due to the T-72 being notably inferior to the West’s main battle tanks or poor training and tactics on the part of the Iraqis is irrelevant: the perception in many nations following the 1991 war was that the Soviet tank was inferior. Thus, there was pressure within the Russian military-industrial complex to get rid of the “T-72” name. Hence naming the first tank out of the newly formed “Russia” the T-90.
The T-54 and T-55 tanks are a series of Soviet main battle tanks introduced in the years following the Second World War. The first T-54 prototype was completed at Nizhny Tagil by the end of 1945. Initial production ramp up settled for 1947 at Nizhny Tagil, and 1948 for Kharkov were halted and curtailed as many problems were uncovered; the T-34-85 still accounted for 88 percent of production through the 50's. The T-54 eventually became the main tank for armoured units of the Soviet Army, armies of the Warsaw Pact countries, and many others. T-54s and T-55s have been involved in many of the world's armed conflicts since the later part of the 20th century.
