Summary

This book is a photo essay of the 101st Airborne in Normandy from D-Day through early July 1944. The first of Casemate’s Illustrated series, the book has many black-and-white and color photographs, colored vehicle profiles, color photos of key participants, and colored maps. Written descriptions of the 101st units and movements accompany the many photos. The text is fairly brief, and is not meant to be a complete written description of the activities of the 101st. Most of the information is contained in photographs, captions, and more detailed “In profile” articles.

Introduction: I was very excited to have the opportunity to review this kit. I love the older motorcycles and this kit did not disappoint. According to www.Scalemates.com, the kit is a new tool. But I believe it is a reboxing of the old Protar kit from the 70s line the Norton Manx kit. The kit is definitely a product of the 70s era. The term "agricultural" came to mind as I was examining the sprues. Not to say it’s a bad kit at all...far from it, but it was tooled back in the day and it is not shake and bake. The kit comes on seven sprues and has two substantial rubber tires that hold their shape well. There are a large number of screws in various sizes as well. An interesting feature of the kit is the hoses. They are pre-formed in soft pliable rubber. No measuring, no cutting to length. There are a few minor sink marks on some of the body panels, but they are able to be sanded out with no filler. On to the build!!

IPMS/USA thanks Ross and his Team at SAC for supporting the IPMS USA reviewer corps with one more of many monthly releases, with extremely useful and well-thought out landing gear additions for the modeling crowd out here in the modeling world. And thanks to IPMS leadership for sending it for review.

This review is for the SAC landing gear released for the 1/72 Valom B-45 series. (Yes Mrs Robinson, there was an aircraft named “Tornado” before the “Tornaaaahhhdo” in the European sense.) This SAC gear is extremely simple, much like the kit itself. As a note, the Valom B-45 kits are easier to build than the other 1/72 B-45s out there as well... even though it is also a short run style kit, the quality is much more refined. SAC’s set is comprised of six parts… and are quick additions.

History

The B-52 is arguably the best bomber ever made. First deployed in 1955 as a high altitude “atomic bomber” later versions of it are still in use today.

The Kit

Inside the box you will find 8 sprues of light grey and clear injected plastic. An 8-page instruction manual and a nice sheet of decals. Basically, only the fuselage halves and sprue F are new to this kit as everything else comes from, and is marked, for the B-52H kit. The one minor hitch here is that the very fine panel lines in the wings do NOT match those on the fuselage as these are more Matchbox like. The decal sheet is very nice and in register.

This is Ammo by Mig Jimenez’s 2017 product catalog (or catalogue in British English since this is translated from Spanish to this). This publication is large, 132 pages of glossy, colorful pages. It starts with a one-page introduction directly from Mig Jimenez. He writes a paragraph that I really think sums up modeling progression: