Italian Artillery in WW2 is a subject long neglected in the modeling field, although it’s good to see Italeri and other companies starting to create kits of these subjects. Italy’s artillery arm during that war suffered, to a certain degree, from their successes in the Great War, where they captured or otherwise obtained large numbers of artillery pieces from the defeated Austro-Hungarian Empire. This led to a certain complacency in the higher military echelons concerning further developments, so that Italy was always suffering from inadequate support in this field. That being said, when they did develop new materials they were consistently excellent with innovations such as easily replaceable inner barrels.

This is a new, very nice kit from ICM. The parts have very good detail, go together will, and end up with a highly detailed model. Care must be used due to small parts, so the kit may be difficult for beginners.

The kit comes with all the parts in one plastic bag. The five vinyl tires are separately bagged, as are the clear plastic sprue parts. The bulk of the kit is on six dark yellow sprues. The parts have extremely good detail and there are many finely cast pieces. There are lots of small pieces and the kit includes 211 parts overall. The front grill is particularly well cast with openings between the individual grill slats. There is no flash apparent on the parts and mold seams are minimal. The detail on the parts is incredible and this should make for a highly detailed model. The plastic is quite soft so care will need to be taken to avoid gouging the plastic when cleaning up the parts.

This is the first Takom kit I have built, and I must say I was most impressed once I opened the box and got into the build.

In the box is:

• 8 sprues
• 1 hull
• 1 decal sheet
• 1 instruction booklet

The sprues are well molded with very crisp details on all the parts with no flash. The plastic itself seemed very soft. The sprue lay out is a dream and makes it extremely easy to find parts as needed.

Construction

Construction starts with the upper Hull. This is very easy to assemble with few or no issues at all. My only personal comment is the total lack of interior detail, which would have added a lot to the kit, and allowed for the various hatches and doors to be built open. The machine gun and cannon sub-assemblies are built next, and do have a few fit issues that needed filling. Once the gun sub-assemblies are installed, the upper hull is set aside for now.

The New Vanguard series is Osprey’s long running series that looks at weapon systems through the ages. One of their most prolific authors, Steven J. Zaloga, has turned his considerable talents toward one of the most least understood Soviet Main Battle Tanks, the T-64. Unlike other Soviet tanks that were exported around the world and have seen combat, the T-64 has largely remained within the confines of the old Soviet Union, making this volume on the slim side. As with all Osprey books, this one includes color profiles by Ian Palmer, a cut away of the vehicle, and plenty of photographs.

L.Z. Models has added another great vehicle to their line of wartime construction equipment with a resin kit of the US Army LeTourneau CarryAll LS Scraper. The CarryAll is a smaller LS variant of the famous Le Torneau scraper, and was used widely by US and other armies during and long after WWII. The Scraper was usually seen towed by a CAT D7 and later a D8 tractor, and is a perfect companion to L.Z. Models’ tractor and bulldozer kits.

The L.Z. Models kit is a challenging build due to the intricate cabling system, but was enjoyable to work through the assembly. Resin and photoetch experience is required for this kit.