Historical Background

This is volume 2 of a series of publications providing the history of the development of the Lavochkin La-5 series of fighters used by the Soviets and their allies during World War II, or what they called the Great Patriotic War. The author goes into great detail describing the technological development of the type, and its engine, providing very intricate details of what went wrong during developmental testing, and how the problems were either ignored or solved. For a reviewer such as myself, this information is completely understandable, but for a non-pilot, it might be a little over complicated. One thing the author could have done for his English speaking readers would have been to provide speeds, dimensions, and weights in the English systems, pounds, miles per hour, and feet and inches, as well as the metric figures.

The US Navy’s most common aerial torpedo used in WWII was the first purpose built torpedo for use in aircraft (but they were also used on PT boats. Brengun’s kit comes with twelve photoetch parts and three resin parts. The kit comes with two options- the early configuration which is a standard looking torpedo and was used from 1935 until 1942. The second option was a later configuration with breakaway plywood nose (often called the pickle barrel) and plywood tail used from 1942 until 1951. I opted for the late version for variety.