This is the first of three reports on the Hobby Boss 1:350 USS Missouri model kit. Two subsequent reports are planned, the second report at approx. the mid-point of the build and the third upon completion.

The USS Missouri was the third Iowa class battleship built for the US Navy and was completed in 1944. It is famous for being the ship on which the Japanese surrender was signed to end WWII. It was an impressive vessel, and this model captures its splendor.

Tamiya’s new ‘Panzer IV/70(A)’ kit depicts a late war German ‘stopgap’ design attempting to mount a high-velocity L/70 75mm anti-tank gun on a minimally modified Panzer IV chassis. The resulting vehicle had a taller profile than most other turretless Panzer IV and III types. Since this is a late-war vehicle, the lack of zimmerit is appropriate.

The Airspeed Company was set up by future novelist Neville Shute Norway in Portsmouth, Britain, in the mid-Thirties, building small passenger aircraft. During WWII, the RAF relied on the twin-engined Airspeed Oxford as a multi-purpose trainer for a wide variety of roles, including pilot and aircrew training, aerial photography, navigation, and even gunnery training when fitted with an Armstrong Whitworth turret. Derived from the earlier Airspeed Envoy, an early executive aircraft, the Oxford was, post-war, also developed into an effective small airliner, the Consul. Over 8,900 Oxfords and Consuls were built, a testimony to its effectiveness in all roles. The Oxford and Consul have now been made a subject of the long-running Warpaint series from Guideline Publications in Britain.

I reviewed the Erawan War, Volume 2 - The CIA Paramilitary Campaign in Laos 1969-1974 that was posted in January 2023. I was impressed so much with Ken Conboy’s style, research, and approach that I asked to review the third volume in his series on the Erawan War. And I was not disappointed. While the first two volumes focus on American efforts, largely though the CIA, this volume focuses on the Laotian perspective and their many wars, infighting, international relations, and coups. Despite the efforts of the French, Americans, South Vietnamese, Thai, and Filipino advisors and military, the Laotian country followed the other Southeast Asian countries in their forceful conversion to communism.

Building a battleship, especially one this large and complex, can easily appear overwhelming. So, as with any large model project, its easiest to tackle it as a series of subassemblies. That’s more or less the way the instruction sequence is arranged, and it simplifies painting, if nothing else (I found out the hard way that the Tamiya spray can and the bottle lacquer are not the same shade of Kure Grey - too different to use the two together). So everything on this model is painted from the bottle through the airbrush. Otherwise, the Tamiya lacquer goes on beautifully.