Brengun continues its line of aircraft accessories with this set of two 250kg Japanese bombs from World War II. The set consists of two resin bomb bodies and a small photo-etch fret with the fins and fuse propellers. As you would expect with Brengun the resin castings are outstanding and easily removed from the casting plugs at the aft end of the bomb. My set had a little flash one the sides of the bombs from the casting process, but it was very thin and easily removed and the bomb bodies were quickly cleaned up.

The bomb fins are easily removed from the fret with photo etch scissors. Take care to cut them as close to the fin as you can to minimize having to try and clean up the attachment points after removing the fins from the fret as they are fairly small and very thin. I was a little disappointed with the fuse propellers as they are attached to the fret by one of the four blades, but there is no demarcation as to where to cut this blade, and since the propellers are very tiny, I found I guessed wrong more than I guessed right. Fortunately there were a couple of extra propellers on the fret!

I deviated from the instructions as Brengun tells you to attach the fuse propellers first and then the fins, but I knew the propellers would never survive my handling of the bombs while installing the fins, so I reversed this sequence. The fins mount into thin slots on the bomb body, so I would recommend using thin medium setting superglue instead of the gel superglue I used as it was difficult to clean up the excess superglue from the fins. The fins mount in a “+” configuration, so I mounted one set of opposing fins first to make sure they were 180 degrees from each other. Next I attached a third fin at 90 degrees to the other two and then installed the tail fuse propeller while I had an opening where the fourth fin would be attached. I then installed the fourth fin 180 degrees from the third fin and the tail band that squares off the tail fins. I left the nose propellers off until right before I photographed the completed bombs in order to try and keep them on.

I was not able to find a lot of information online about Japanese World War II bombs, but there is a nice article at the Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor website which has some information on them along with photographs of replicas on display at the museum. The bombs appear to be a light grey color with a metallic colored nose. The photograph showed a thin medium blue band around the aft portion of the bomb. I tried to replicate the thin blue band by painting the bomb medium blue and then using pinstripe tape to mask the band while the rest of the bomb was painted light grey, but the band ended up being much too wide - I recommend using thin blue decal stripes instead. Once the grey was dry, I dipped the nose of each bomb in Testor’s steel to replicate the metallic nose. I sealed everything with Testor’s clear flat and then attached the nose propellers; unfortunately one of these was knocked off while moving the bombs for photographs, never to be seen again!

This is a nice set and will add some good detail to Japanese bombers that carried their bombs externally, but the photo-etch parts are small, so I recommend them to modelers with some experience with photo-etch (and more patience than I had). Recommended!

Thank you to Brengun for the sample set and to IPMS/USA for letting me review it.