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 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.

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.

Background

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.

After many years of being published in enthusiast publications focused on military vehicle restorations, David Doyle ‘graduated’ to full-fledged books in 2003. His first book was a hefty 512 page history of US military vehicles. He has now had more than 100 books published in military vehicles, aviation and naval topics. David and his wife Denise have amassed a collection of ten Vietnam era military vehicles that still displays at shows. In June 2015, was honored with the Military Vehicle Preservation Association’s Bart Vanderveen Award, given in recognition of "...the individual who has contributed the most to the historic preservation of military vehicles worldwide." Be sure to check out David’s website at www.DavidDoyleBooks.com where you can see and buy at a discounted price off of MSRP all his books that are still available.