History Brief

Our subject is a Los Angeles Class submarine, the USS Greeneville, SSN-772. It was named after the city of Greeneville, Tennessee, home of President Andrew Johnson, and is the only US Navy ship to have borne that name. She was ordered on 14 December 1988 with the contract going to Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in Newport News, Virginia. Her keel was laid 28 February 1992, she was launched 17 September 1994, and commissioned on 16 February 1996. The Greeneville had a few bumps and mishaps early in her career but is still serving proudly today.

Our model features an ASDS Advance SEAL Delivery System. It is basically a midget submarine that rides piggyback on larger submarines and is primarily used for covert and clandestine operations by the US Navy SEALs.

This issue represents a milestone for SAM. This is the inaugural issue for Volume 35. Thirty five years of providing a high quality publication to the modeling community is a momentous event and SAM deserves a “Well Done” for that remarkable achievement.

Even if this issue were not the launch for Vol 35, it would have caught my attention immediately. There, on the cover, is one of my favorite modeling subjects. In any scale, the Ju-87 has always been an enjoyable project for me, and in 1/32nd, by Trumpeter, well, it just doesn’t get any better than that. In 9 pages of richly detailed text, Editor Jay Laverty shares the tools and techniques he used to produce an excellent model of the Ju-87B-2.

For decades, the venerable Monogram TBD Devastator was the only kit of its kind available in 1/48 scale, lauded in its heyday for its cockpit and surface detail, as well as the option to pose the wings in either the folded or extended position. Now, Great Wall Hobby has delivered a new Devastator, and like the original release, this second edition is a quantum leap past the old benchmark kit. When first seen, the GWH Devastator was derided as a mere copy of the Monogram version, but close examination reveals that the new kit is several steps beyond its aged predecessor.

Unlike my last review sample of SAC products, this time the USPS did not wreak havoc on the package and all but destroy the contents! They delivered an intact and fully usable set of landing gear.

What you get in the package is a full gear replacement in white metal for both main gear legs and the tail wheel. As you can see from one of the photos, the SAC gear has simplified things by making the compression scissors one piece versus two pieces.

Detail is crisper on the metal gear than on the kit’s plastic parts, as has come to be expected from SAC. The replacement parts are a drop fit with no issues whatsoever. They worked flawlessly and added considerably to the look of the finished model.

Upon receiving this kit in the mail, I looked over the artwork on the box top to see which paint scheme I thought would be cool to do. I noticed a camouflaged scheme that had a blue pattern. Immediately, I questioned the blue color. I checked the instructions and yes, there it was – sky blue color callouts. The other thing that I noticed, aside from the standard Dragon instruction, was there were nice decals, 23 grey sprues, 2 clear sprues, a PE fret, and 2 bags of magic tracks. The instructions show quite a few sprues with the majority of unused parts (which I included pictures of). I was still wondering a few days later which scheme to do. I was really intrigued by the sky blue scheme. At this point, I decided to post on Hyper scale about its validity. Tom Cockle, one of the technical consultants for this kit, shot me a reply saying no, it was a fake, and added this kit was missing a sprue C. Upon this, I contacted Dragon care and finally got my part around New Years.