This book is Number 26 of the “Asia War” series. The book is divided into 6 sections, two appendixes, Bibliography and notes. One of the sections is the introduction to Operation Cactus, as well as a small history, and the location of the Maldives Islands.

This introduction section, introduces you to the Sri Lanka’s Tamil insurgents. You are also introduced to the politics, and the economy of the Maldives Islands and the genesis of the Coup.

This metal landing gear set from SAC replaces the gear parts and pitot mast in the new tool Airfix Bristol Beaufort kit. Like its cousins from Bristol, the Blenheim and Beaufighter, the Beaufort has a multipart, complex main gear structure. Airfix has done a good job reproducing this in plastic. The SAC parts are direct copies of those. I compared the assembly of the plastic parts against the white metal SAC pieces. I found the plastic parts had an advantage.

OKB Grigorov specializes in resin, photoetch and turned metal barrel conversions for armor. One of their latest releases is the tracks for the Russian T-34 mod.1940 third variant.

This aftermarket set includes parts in grey resin. As you can see from the pictures, the casting of the parts is pretty good, without any bubbles in the resin and small attachment points.

This set provides you with 4 sections of track and the pictures show the fantastic level of detail of the tracks, both inside and outside sides.

The sections of track are cast flat, so you would have to gently bend them to shape, using the wheels from the kit to get the proper curvature radius. The resin is very thin, so this should be relatively easy. I would suggest to dip the tracks in hot water before bending them around the wheels and dipping them in cold water afterwards to “set” the curvature in.

As an avid reader and collector of WWII related books, I am always on the lookout for material that presents unique perspectives and experiences from this era. Finding this book, Barbarossa Campaign in 1941 Hungarian Perspective fits right in.

Author Peter Mujzer is a devoted historian who has served in the Hungarian armed services and is a consummate student of its history. Prior to this book, he has published 10 additional works, specifically on the Hungarian armor, equipment, and battles of WWII. For this book Mujzer states, “…I would like to introduce our readers to the first major campaign of the Royal Hungarian Army fought against the Red Army in Ukraine from July until November of 1941.” It only takes a cursory flip through the pages to realize what an expert like Mujzer calls an introduction, is way more than that to the average reader.

This set is designed to provide replacement parts for Hobby Boss’ 1/72 A-4F Skyhawk kit. As with most of SAC’s landing gear sets, the metal parts are intended to be one-for-one replacements for the kit parts. The set consists of the nose gear strut, port and starboard main gear struts and retraction/extension arms for all three of these.

Like the kit part, the nose wheel is cast with the nose strut. SAC has also cast the nosewheel steering (part C21) as part of the strut, however as the arms on this part are very thin, they are easily bent, so take care around them. The set also includes the retraction/extension actuator for the nose strut, however, as the actuator is very skinny, it is easily deformed and when I first looked at it, I thought it was a brake line as the one in my set was pretty curvy.