If you are looking for a fun, easy to assemble kit to fill some of your time during the dog-days of summer, I would suggest that you consider looking towards the folks at Dragon and one of their latest releases, a 1/72 scale Flakpanzer that is based on a Panther chassis. Aside from the road wheels, there are a minimal number of parts for this kit, which allows for quick assembly. The fit of the parts presented no issues, and the builder ends up with a nice-looking late-war paper-Panzer. A person with relatively little modeling experience can have very good results with this kit.

Designed late during World War II, the idea of the Flakpanzer V “Coelian” came from Rheinmetall-Borsig, and their project to install a pair of 37 millimeter Flak 43 guns in a turret that would be mounted to a Panther A chassis. Of course, due to the popularity of the Panther in the battlefield, there were not enough to go around for designs such as this one. Photographs do exist of a wooden mock-up turret installed on a Panther D chassis, but none would actually be produced before the victory of the Allies.

Upon opening this kit, the modeler will find three sprues holding one hundred and twenty-four of the pieces (there are many leftovers for your spares box), while the upper hull and turret are packaged loose, and the Dragon Styrene tracks and decals are bagged separately. The plastic is the typical light gray, lightly textured product that Dragon is known for, while the Dragon Styrene used for the tracks is tan in color. The instructions are in color and are printed on a single sheet of glossy paper folded in half, and the center pages provide all of the assembly directions which consist of a mere four steps. As mentioned previously, there are many parts to stock up your spare parts box as two of the sprues are used for several other Panther releases in this scale; there is one sprue of eight parts included that is unique to the Coelian.

As I mentioned, the kit goes together well, and I have no fit issues to report. In step two of the instructions, I did find that parts located on the bottom of sprue A (part numbers 19, 14, 5, 15, and 4) are not labeled. In addition, in step two, the road wheels labeled as A18 are numbered as 1 on the sprue. Both issues are easy to overcome by looking at the sprue layout provided on page one of the directions. I have become a fan of the Dragon Styrene tracks, especially for this scale, as the ends weld together solidly using either Tenax 7R or your liquid glue of choice, and they can be lightly tacked down to the tops of the road wheels to induce sag.

I opted for the simpler of the two paint schemes shown on the last page of the instructions, using Model Master Acryl Dunkelgelb and Tamiya Hull Red for my main colors. I also put Vallejo Dark Rubber, Gunmetal, Oily Steel, Natural Steel, and New Wood to use, as well as Model Master Metalizer Burnt Iron. This scheme would be the best choice for a modeler with less experience, and in my opinion is more manageable than the three-color scheme in this scale.

As far as my hits for this kit are concerned, I will once again commend Dragon for their level of detail for this scale, and applaud the engineering for the fit of this kit. The slide-mold technology used by the folks at Dragon made the 37 mm gun barrels look great, and although not used for this version, the exhausts for some of the other Panther variants benefit from this technology as well. I also like the addition of the engine deck for the vehicle, although the detail is covered up once the rear deck is installed. The Dragon Styrene tracks have a great level of detail, and they are a pleasure to work with.

My only real miss with this kit was the lack of part numbers, and part numbers that do not match the instructions, but as I mentioned this is easy to overcome by looking at page one. In addition, pay attention to the instructions when assembling the drive sprockets, as both the used and unused sprockets consist of parts A4 and A5, so again refer to page one for the A4 and A5 set not highlighted in blue (for those not familiar with Dragon kits, blue highlights are used to indicate parts not used). If you do select the three-color camouflage pattern, know that there is no reference showing the right side or the top of the vehicle, so that will be up to the modeler to interpret.

In conclusion, I would highly recommend this kit to those who enjoy working in 1/72 scale, as the finished model is very manageable in regards to the amount of display area that it requires. Based on the ease of construction, it requires very little experience to build this kit up nicely as long as a limited number of small parts do not bother you. Even though there are a few small items to install, there are extra parts available for items such as the machine gun barrel, U-bolts, and headlight.

As always, I want to thank the folks at Dragon Models USA for providing this kit to the IPMS-USA to review, to Steve Collins and the others who keep the Review Corps running, and to you for taking the time to read my comments.