The birth of the Irish Republic that we know today began in 1916. The leadership and members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (forerunners of the Irish Republican Army) decided that the British parliament had delayed Irish home rule long enough. It was time for action. On Easter weekend in 1916 a group of approximately 1,600 armed rebels seized key locations in Dublin and proclaimed separation from Britain and established the Irish Republic. From the steps of the General Post Office a proclamation was read that announced the birth of a sovereign, self-determined Irish Republic. The proclamation established a legislature, a government, a court system, and a police force. At the same time, the Irish Volunteers, a military organization established in 1913 by Irish nationalists, became known as the Irish Republican Army (IRA). For the next three years the IRA targeted the British forces in Ireland with deadly guerrilla strikes.

First, I owe an apology to you and to Dragon for my delay in building and reviewing the “…best dive bomber the Navy ever flew but also the last.” That final assessment came after a difficult start in replacing the Dauntless, “one of the most popular aircraft ever to fly.” In fact, when the first squadrons conducted trials aboard the Essex CV-9, “…the ship departed for the war zone with SBD Dauntlesses instead.” In trials aboard the second assigned carrier, the second Yorktown CV-10, “…the results were so disastrous that the ship’s Commanding Officer, Captain J.J. ‘Jocko’ Clark, stated that the aircraft’s only value was as an anchor.” Though the Helldiver could carry a heavier payload and was faster than the Dauntless, and ongoing improvements ironed out its shortcomings, it became a great aircraft with the moniker the Big Tailed Beast or simply, the Beast. The Helldiver’s combat debut was on November 11, 1943, when VB-17 attacked the Japanese island fortress at Rabaul.

This is my first opportunity to look at the relatively new Osprey series called Command. As the name suggests, this series doesn’t look at hardware or military units, but the commanders. As with most Osprey books, this series provides a broad overview of the commander’s life, command responsibilities, leadership abilities, and legacy. I jumped at the chance to see how the Osprey formula works with personalities.

This is the second book I have reviewed for IPMS that is entirely in Japanese. This time it is on the Ferrari F1 cars made by Tamiya and Fujimi.

I have several Ferrari models at home and thought this would be a nice companion guide to some of my older Ferrari books. This guide covers several Tamiya models and, from what I can tell, a Fujimi and possibly a Hasegawa F1 Ferrari. Like I said, the fact it is missing subtitles is a bit of a hindrance. It does show a bunch of neat tricks, though, that I would not have normally thought of. There are painting tips, wiring tips, and wheel tips. The pictures go into great detail, which helps. You don’t need to read Japanese if you follow the pictures.

I will start this review by stating that the new Dragon release of the German Neubau-Fahrzeug is a well-engineered, fun to build kit that goes together nicely to produce a very realistic replica of the “new construction vehicle”. My assembly time was short as there were no fit issues, and I probably spent more time researching this vehicle than anything else, but more on that later. The slide mold technology being utilized by Dragon allows for the front idler wheels and road wheels to be single-piece items, but with an impressive amount of detail for this scale.