Military Police units have the mission, among many others, to provide armed escort to supply convoys in a combat zone. During the Vietnam War there were never enough military police combat support units to accomplish this mission. Commanders of truck companies in the 8th Transportation Group began to arm and armor 2-1/2 ton and 5 ton cargo trucks to provide convoy security. The 8th Trans Group became the major user of gun trucks during the war.

This book, number 184 in the New Vanguard series published by Osprey Publishing, describes the development and employment of gun trucks during the last half of the Vietnam War. The first half of the volume describes the U.S. Army motor transport units deployed in South Vietnam, the Army convoy system itself, and the threat the convoys faced. The second half provides a good description of gun truck design and development and gun truck tactics.

Airscale is a British company producing fine quality aircraft instrument decals, and this is one of those. Unfortunately, I am no expert on instrumentation; can't really tell a tachometer from an altimeter.

Airscale provides a very detailed callout of each instrument dial on its instruction sheet and a locating number to show which dial it is. Very helpful. There are 44 different decals, each with its own number. The bad side is there is only one dial of each per sheet. Many of these are very small and the only way to see them is with magnification. The instruction sheet provides detailed instructions on how to apply them, and tips on their use.

The decals are printed with a lot of excess film surrounding them, so you will have to cut each one out very carefully or use a punch set (which I haven't seemed to master yet). They go down easily and set using any standard decal setting solution. I tried Microset and Solvaset and both worked with no problems.

A couple of new products from Wheeliant are two sets of Early Wheel Chocks for the U.S. Navy. They are cast in grey resin and come with simple details to set them apart. The instructions are adequate for assembly but give no painting directions.

Set 132-008, which is the "Blocks with Fixed Bar," comes with some small wire for the release fitting on the chocks. I had to drill and file the holes in the blocks to accommodate the bar. Only took a couple of seconds. Be sure you adjust the blocks to the wheel dimensions you are going to use them on before gluing the release cable and holder (piece # R-4). They are a sloppy fit and require a little more glue than you might expect, ultimately fixing the bar in place permanently.

Introduction

Many of us were taken by surprise on May 2nd, 2011, when the President came on TV and announced Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been found and eliminated by a team of US Navy SEALs in a secret operation,"Neptune Spear." In the following days, after the dust had settled, we found that the mission had been accomplished at bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, using then-unknown-to-the-public, radar-evading or "stealth" helicopters.
Between May and September (only 3 - 4 months), Dragon was able to design a conceptual kit that captures what the Neptune Spear helicopters might look like and get their kit into production and on the store shelves. There was a little confusion during that 4 month period - the name of the actual operation was "Neptune Spear" and "Geronimo" was the code word indicating the operation had successfully taken down bin Laden, but that's neither here nor there.

Armies cannot operate long without supplies (food, fuel, ammo to start with) delivered to them. The German High Command thought so highly of this Opel truck that the German government nationalized production in 1940, taking it out of the hands of the US GM owners. The Opel Blitz “S” model began production in April, 1937 and by July, 1944, 82,356 3t trucks had been manufactured. The final number is actually over 100,000 when specialized vehicles built on this chassis are included. To further emphasize how valuable this truck was to Germany, in late 1945 the US Military allowed Opel to reopen the production facilities for the 3t truck to aid post-war recovery.