The book is a fascinating and remarkable insight into the brief, intense, and crucial Netherlands East Indies (NEI) campaign from the Japanese invasion in December 1941 through capitulation of the NEI. This often overlooked campaign, particularly among Americans who were primarily concerned with the Philippines campaign. Pacific Profiles Volume 17 focuses on the allied air forces in the Netherlands East Indies campaign, including Netherlands East Indies (composing of the ML-KNIL - Militaire Luchtvaart van het Koninklijk Nederlands-Indisch Leger (Royal Netherlands East Indies Air Force) and the MLD – Marine Luchtvaart Dienst (Netherlands Naval Aviation Service)), Royal Air Force (RAF), Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), US Army Air Corps (USAAC) and US Navy (USN).

This is an 8.5 x 11.5, soft-bound book with a glossy heavy card stock cover enclosing 112 pages of glossy heavy weight paper. Along with the test, there are 161 black and white photos and 22 color photos, including 4 color photos on the front and back covers and front panel. Also included are five tables covering technical specifications, Helldiver squadrons, aircraft production numbers, and foreign operators, plus a chart of tail and wing markings used between January 27 and July 27, 1945. This coincides with the period of highest use of the Helldiver.

The first chapter is a detailed history of Curtiss Aircraft from its beginnings through 1951. It goes into some depth of the troubles the company had with corruption and poor quality during the pre-war and war years.

Kagero’s newest books are designed around the modeler. These small booklets are really nice. The cover is thick cardstock and contains 26 pages of information.

The pages have one or two large photos per page on high-gloss heavyweight paper. In addition to the thirteen great pages of photos, there are two full-color profiles inside and one on the back cover. There are six pages of line drawings starting with the G-3, G-5, and G-6 variants. The drawings are in 1/72^nd and 1/48^th scale.

In addition to the great photos, profiles, and line drawings is a decal sheet that features the Bf-109G-6 on the cover, which is also one of the four-view color profiles inside. The decals are in both 1/72^nd and 1/48^th scale.

Quality large photos, full color profiles, and line drawings, along with the decal sheet make this another great offering from Kagero. If you have a small budget, these are a good value for the money.

UMM-USA has provided the reviewer core with a riveting tool for 1/32^nd and 1/35^th scale models.

This is a single row rivet pounce wheel with a rivet pitch (distance between rivets) of 1.10 mm. Its main target use is for larger models of 1/32^nd or 1/35^th scale. The handle is made from a 3-D printer and the filament is colored white and black. An olive-green dot is colored into the handle and correlates to the size on the sheet packaging for 1.10 mm rivet pitch.

I used this tool on a plastic sheet and then darkened it with a weathering wash to bring out the divot locations. I also placed a steel ruler as reference to see the pitch distance between divots.

Conclusion

This is a neat tool to have which will add more detail to your builds by adding fastener/rivet detail to the surface of your larger scaled kit(s).

This is a soft bound book of 26 pages on the Messerschmidt ME 163, Komet. Included is a sheet of decals in both 1/72 and 1/48 scale of the 163 as seen on the front cover. The cover is printed on heavy glossy stock and shows a Messerschmidt ME 163, Werk # 10061 in both top and side view. The book contains little text except for short descriptions of each of the 27 black and white photos that make up the front section of the book. The photos appear to have been taken at an unnamed museum in Europe. There isn’t an author of the book listed. However, the author of the technical drawing that makes up the final section of the book is listed as Marek Rys.