This book describes Exercise Tiger, the rehearsal for the American D-Day landings on Utah Beach in Normandy. The training exercise occurred on the Devon and Dorset coasts of England around the village of Slapton Sands on April 27, 1944. Almost 1000 American soldiers and sailors died during the exercise, which was later covered up by officials embarrassed by the fiasco.

This book describes the effort of author Ken Small to uncover the truth about the deaths of the soldiers and sailors and to ensure their sacrifice would never be forgotten. First published in 1988, the book has been updated and re-published in 2018.

Dora Wings is a relatively new company with a number of low-pressure injection mold releases. I contacted them and we were fortunate to receive two new kits - a P-63E King Cobra (reviewed elsewhere on this site) and the iconic Gee Bee R2 racer. There’s plenty of history to be found regarding this little bumblebee of an airplane - maximum sized engine stuffed into the smallest possible airframe - so let’s get right to the build.

Kit contents include a very nicely detailed P&W Wasp radial, a very complete cockpit section (most of which becomes invisible under the tiny canopy) and a sheet of crisp p/e detail. A single sheet, 4 sided color instruction sheet includes a painting guide, and a sheet of masking media is included to allow you to recreate the scalloped paint scheme.

Thanks to Casemate Publishing for the review copy!

From Masterpiece Models Web Site, the back story is:

XP-1937 Coastal Reconnaissance – In 2115 World War IV broke out over the last natural resources. The Earth was divided into three major Confederations: The United Alliance of the Americas, the Euro/Siberian Alliance, and the Middle Asian/African Consortium.

2121 marked a turning point in the War when shoreline installations across the globe, both military and civilian, fell under an onslaught of terrifying proportions. From out of the sea came machines so unearthly in their aspect that even the brightest scientists could only guess that they must be extraterrestrial in origin. They were wrong. The XP-1937 Naval CRABS were the front runners of a New Faction that would bring the Confederations to their knees.

XP-1937 Coastal Reconnaissance, Attack and Battery, Scout Specifications

The AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) is manufactured by Raytheon Company and gives a precision strike, launch and leave capability. The JSOW has a stand-off range of around 12 miles when launched at low altitude and around 70 miles when launched at altitude. The weapon weighs around 1,000 lbs. and has different payloads depending on which variant it is. The AGM-154A carries 145 BLU-97 sub-munitions and is used to attack fixed and moveable soft targets such as parked aircraft, trucks, APCs and surface to air missile sites. The AGM-154C is equipped with a 500 lb. blast/fragmentation/penetrator warhead and is used to attack fixed point targets such as buildings and hardened tactical targets. The JSOW uses a global position/inertial navigation system for guidance and the C model has a terminal IR seeker. Over 400 JSOWs have been used in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq since it entered service in 1999. (US Navy Fact File)