History Brief:

Vickers-Armstrongs privately designed the Valentine. Based on the A-10 Cruiser tank it was submitted to the War Office on Feb 10 1938. The development team matched the lower weight of a cruiser tank to the suspension and transmission of the A10 heavy cruiser, with the superior armor of an infantry tank. The new design was easier to produce and cost less than the older Matilda tanks. The first Valentines used a gasoline engine with conventional steering. The Mark II used a diesel version of the engine while the Mark IV and later variants GMC diesels.

The Ship:

Known officially as the Type 36A class (and by the Allies as the Narvik class), these vessels were Germany’s attempt to improve their individual destroyer’s firepower to compensate for their smaller numbers. To do this, these ships carried 5.9” (150mm) main guns, a caliber usually found on light cruisers. These weapons had no AA capability, as well as having the undesirable effect of weighing the ship down by the bow. Z-31 was designed to carry a twin mount forward, but it wasn’t until late in her life that these were mounted. This model represents the ship in the 1943-44 period with a single mount forward. She was also equipped to carry mines, and many of the class had more success in that role than in any other. By the end of hostilities, several of the class had been lost to surface or air attack, but Z-31 survived to be turned over to France as a war prize.

The Kit:

Saturday morning cartoons once again meet the modeling bench in Round2’s resurrection of classic kits featuring Warner Brothers’ beloved Road Runner and his nemesis, Wile E. Coyote. Of the three newly re-released kits, this review focuses on the hapless Wile E. Coyote and the Wile E. Willys – a loony dragster embodying a skateboard culture theme.

The MPC-branded kit consists of 4 sprues of colored parts (including 1 chrome-plated), a set of peel-and-stick decals, and a pre-painted vinyl Wile E. Coyote figure. Construction is touted as snap-together, but we found it necessary to apply either superglue or Tamiya liquid cement for virtually every step.

This thick book gives one a close up look at the life of the fighting infantryman! Each of the 10 chapters covers a specific battle and the experiences of those who fought there. From the Pacific theatre to the European, from Vietnam to Iraq, you are there on the beaches, in the foxholes, the rice paddies and through the streets of Fallujah.

This book gives you a very good sense of the up close and personal war that is fought by each and every combat infantryman be they Marine or US Army. Harrowing accounts of night fighting and Banzai charges, fighting the elements and the Germans at the Bulge in this book you are there. Each chapter puts you in the heart of the action and gives you as close as any book can a sense of what it was like to be there.

The Aircraft

The F-4 Phantom first flew in 1958. Subsequent model improvements and Service Life Extension Programs keep it flying today, albeit in a secondary role. It has been used by the USAF, US Navy, US Marines and 11 non-US services. The Turkish AF probably has plans to paint an aircraft for the Phantom’s 50th anniversary.

The Kit

This is another of Hasegawa’s “modular Phantoms”. You get a whole box full of sprues which allow you to build the model on the box top by selecting the correct fuselage front, horizontal stabilizers and wing. This approach works fine for the F-4 B through S, except for the RAF M and K models, which had a slightly different fuselage shape.