The Mark XIII torpedo was the primary air-dropped torpedo of U.S. Navy in World War II. While it originally entered service in 1938, due to a series of design flaws, its performance during the first years of World War II was dismal, often running erratically, failing to maintain the correct depth and arming prematurely. However, continued improvements to the Mark XIII during the war eventually made it a powerful and effective weapon. Later in the war, Mark XIII’s were used on American PT boats on roll-off racks, replacing the bulky torpedo tube launchers originally mounted (United States Naval Undersea Museum).

This review covers the following standing sticks from the AMMO line

• Standard sanding stick with grits 180/320/600/2000; MSRP: $1.50
• Large Surfaces sanding stick with grits: 320/600/4000; MSRP: $2.10
• Multipurpose sanding stick with grits 150/240/320/600/1200/2000; MSRP: $2.30

All these sticks have the different grits identified by color coding each surface of half-surface. Their size is large enough to fit well and comfortable in your hand.

They are flexible, so you can use them in any task that requires following curved surfaces. They are padded (in particular the Large Surfaces one), which means your hand does not need to follow a curved path, the padding of the sanding stick will do that for you.

The Multipurpose stick is a workbench workhouse that could be used from shaping parts with its 150/240 grit, all the way to polishing parts with its 2000 grit.

“US Soldier versus German Soldier, Salerno, Anzio, and Omaha Beach, 1943-44”, published May 2020, became number 48 in Osprey’s Combat Series. Osprey’s Combat Series, first published in 2013, describe in detail history’s adversaries pitted against each other using analysis, photographs, maps, and commissioned color plates. Chris McNab, author, and editor has written numerous books for Osprey and more than a hundred books, magazines and newspapers on military history and military technology. Steve Noon has illustrated over 50 books for Osprey.

This 80-page, 7.3 x 9.8-inch, book consists of an introduction, 6 chapters, bibliography and index containing 20 color photographs, maps, and illustrations and 45 b/w images.

UGears is a Ukrainian company that opened in 2015, and UB LLC is their distributor in the US. Their kits are built from laser-cut plywood and cover a vast range of interesting topics. Everything from cars to bikes, trains and even a horse. Their kits are all given a difficulty rating that corresponds to the number of included parts and the estimated assembly time. This Grand Prix car is my first UGears kit and it listed as an advanced kit with an estimated assembly time of 6 to 7 hours.

AFV Club has provided very nice detail-up version of the Knox Class Frigate. It’s the standard kit plus a resin upper hull, a large PE sheet and resin diorama base.

• One light grey sprue
• One large photoetch sheet
• One resin lower hull
• One resin base
• One small decal sheet
• Two instruction sheets (one for the kit and one for the PE parts)

The basic kit is very rudimentary, so the addition of the PE and Resin parts make this a very interesting kit to build. A couple of the areas where you need to remove details that will be replaced by PE parts will need filling, for example on part 20.

The PE instruction sheet is very well presented and detailed. I also suggest you heat treat the PE parts before starting to form them as they were very fragile and will break at the fold lines. The other area to be careful is the steps on the ladders as these snap off easily.