Product Description

ICM has released a kit in 1/32^nd scale featuring a “crew” of 3 Luftwaffe ground personnel in uniforms that would be worn from 1939 to 1945. The kit also includes a 200 liter fuel drum, a pair of smaller containers for liquids, a fuel pump to attach to the fuel drum, and a toolbox with the lid closed. Two of the figures appear to be wearing the same uniform, while the 3^rd figure, standing and carrying one of the aforementioned liquid containers in his right hand, is wearing a slightly different uniform, lighter in color than his crew-mates.

I have been using enamels for many years (decades) now. Enamel hobby paints are getting harder to find and there are the health considerations on enamels, so I have been exploring different acrylics options out there. I was excited to see I had the chance to review the AMMO products, as some of my modeling buddies had good things to say about them.

Readying the AMMO website, you learn that these paints are odorless, water soluble, and non-toxic. All of those above make these paints interesting alternatives as non-toxicity is a great thing and odorless makes the rest of the family happy.

I have to say that I did find a very faint smell on these paints. It is not strong at all and it is not offensive nor headache-inducing as enamels or lacquers. The best I can describe the smell is ‘earthly’. A bit like mud or clay, from a pottery workshop.

This set is designed for Academy’s new F-14A kit. The set provides masks not only for the canopy and the windscreen, but also for the tires or wheel hubs.

There are three parts to the windscreen mask, one for each side and the central panel. The main canopy has 4 parts for each section, two for each side. The instructions advise you to cover the rest of the canopy area with liquid masking, but I prefer to cut small strips out of the unused parts of the masking sheet and use these strips to mask off the rest of the canopy.

After masking the canopy and tacking it over the cockpit, I painted the canopy frames with flat black as this is the interior color of the Tomcat canopy. When this had dried, I then painted the canopy light gull grey when I painted the topside color as I was building an early Tomcat. After painting and decaling were complete, I removed the masks from the canopy sections and discovered a perfectly painted canopy.

The 150 mm SFH18 Howitzer was widely deployed by the German army on all the key fronts during World War 2. Developed in secret, during the years limiting German rearmament under the conditions in the Treaty of Versailles, when Germany began their rearmament in 1933, it was a fully functioning design ready for immediate deployment. Interestingly enough, its first combat use was by the Chinese National Revolutionary Army in the Second Sino-Japanese War. The SFH18 had a simple and reliable design and a maximum range of 13.5 km. The gun and its limber could be separated and towed by horses, or more commonly by a half-track. A less common 105mm version was also developed and shared the same carriage as the 150mm version.

The Red Air Force versus the Luftwaffe in the skies over Eastern Europe.

June 1941: Having conquered most of Western Europe, Adolf Hitler turned his attention to the vast Soviet Union. Disregarding his Non-Aggression Pact with Joseph Stalin, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, a full-scale invasion of the Soviet homeland aimed squarely at Moscow.

In the skies over Russia, the battle-hardened airmen of the Luftwaffe made short work of the Red Air Force during opening days of Barbarossa. To make matters worse, Stalin had executed many of his best pilots during the perennial "purges" of the 1930s. Thus, much of the Red Air Force was destroyed on the ground before meeting the Luftwaffe in the skies. By 1944, however, the Soviet airmen had regained the initiative and fervently wrested air superiority from the now-ailing Axis Powers.