The Navy FJ-4 was, to many people, the culmination of the basic North American Sabre Jet. This final naval variant featured a more powerful engine which required a larger intake, a shorter, deeper fuselage, a larger tail, larger wing area and a longer nose gear. Its front line service was short, however. By the late ‘50’s, the Fury was being phased out by newer, less expensive fighter and attack aircraft but the FJ-4B was loved by its pilots. They referred to it as the “Cadillac” while its counterpart and eventual replacement, the A4D was referred to as the “Tinkertoy”.

Emhar issued the FJ-4B in 1/72nd scale in 1990 and is a great kit. There are really only two shortfalls of the kit; the first being a rather basic cockpit and the second being a crude, short exhaust/jet pipe. Pavla has recently released resin detail parts for the cockpit and the jet pipe.

My thanks to Eduard for furnishing this photo-etch set for review and IPMS for allowing me to do it.

The Avro Lancaster was arguably the RAF’s most famous bomber of the Second World War. Most of its fame was gained as a night bomber. Of the 7,377 Lancasters built, 3,039 were B.Mk.III bombers with Packard built Merlin engines. Nineteen of the Mk.IIIs were specially modified to use the Barnes Wallis-designed "bouncing bomb" and assigned to No. 617 Squadron. That squadron with its modified Lancaster bombers conducted one of the war’s most famous raids – the night attack on four Ruhr Valley dams trying to cripple Germany’s industry in the region.

The Isuzu Type 73 Heavy Truck, is a Japanese work horse tactical truck. It serves in a multitude of rolls throughout the Japanese Armed Services. This kit includes an Isuzu Type 73 Heavy Truck, a Tank Transporter flatbed trailer and a Type 74 Tank. There are a couple of options for displaying the model: you can display the ramps down with the tank driving up and the feet down or with the tank on the trailer and the ramps stowed. There are also two boxings of this kit, with and without the Type 74 tank.

I had decided in the beginning to finish the model I was building in the markings of Fritz Oppenhorst’s Fokker D.VII 4301/18 (Option D in the kit’s painting guide), so I carefully followed the steps in the instructions to confirm which parts should be used in this build. WNW provides comprehensive information to guide the builder, but there are subtle differences between some of the parts, so it is important to double-check most steps to make certain the correct ones are clipped off the sprues. I found it helpful to remove only those parts I would need from the trees, clean up the attachment points (tagging parts if necessary with a piece of numbered masking tape) and bag everything in a zip-lock bag to avoid using any wrong parts down the road.

The book is divided into 8 chapters with an introduction, index, a Bibliography and Glossary & Abbreviations:

• Chronology
• Design and Development
• The Principles of Defense
• Tour of the Sites
• The Living Site
• Operational History
• Aftermath
• The Sites Today

This illustrated volume analyses the different defensive elements of the East Wall, the phases of their construction, the shifting strategic focus, and what life was like for those manning the defenses in the final days of the war.

Conclusion

The book is a quick read and is well researched and documented. From the modelers perspective this will not give you many ideas for dioramas, but as a quick review of the East Wall German fortifications it does the job.

Thanks to Osprey Publishing for the review copy and to IPMS/USA for the review space.