The B-25 was named in honor of
General Billy Mitchell, one of the early pioneers of U.S. military aviation. By
the end of the B-25 production line, nearly 10,000 B-25s in their different
variants models had passed the factories floors. The first flight of the B-25
was during August 1940 and the last country to retired them was Indonesia in
1979. The B-25J variant had a transparent nose, but many of the delivered
aircraft were modified to have a solid nose as some interesting field
modifications were happening in the Pacific theater. Since the B-25 was an
excellent low-level Raider, crews required extra forward facing machine guns to
suppress ground targets while the crews were making their low level skip bombing
passes. With skip bombing the need of bombardier wasn’t required and ground
crews were retrofitting extra ammunition trays to feed the newly fitted 50
caliber machine guns that had been fitted into the nose. Many of these B-25s
were also fitted with the strap on gun packs on each side of the fuselage, just
on the lower aft of the cockpit.
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The copyright on the box
states 2009, but the Revell/Monogram B-25 tooling dates back to the
1970’s. The kit is mold in a hard gray plastic, not the soft silver-ish
plastic like pervious releases with a total of 129 pieces and 7 parts on
the clear sprue bring the total part count to 136 parts.
The detail on the kit is
nicely done, considering how old the tooling date back too. It has very
fine raised plane lines and highly detailed interior compartments as most
of there past releases. The interior compartments includes Ammunition
storage boxes, radios, storage lockers and the upper turret has nice
detail. Also included is a complete bomb bay and positional bomb bay doors
to view the payload, and the crew access hatch is also positional. 3
Figures are included with the kit, a standing and seated pilot and a
mechanic, which are molded very nicely. I sure these will look great once
painted.
The engine assembly’s are
very basic and lack detail, but the engine cowls would cover up most of
that detail anyway. An addition of an ignition harness would improve the
appearance.
Also included are the side
strap-on gun pods and the extra armour plating on the side of the
fuselage, which is molded on. The kit supplies you two optional schemes,
one with and with out the pods. If you are going to choose to model
another B-25J you will need to check you references regarding the pods and
armour plating and other configurations.
Also, nice feature are the
diamond tread wheels, which have the weighted look molded to them. Talking
about land gears… you will need to fit a quite a bit of ballast weight
to the nose section. In the nose area the kit supply’s you ammo belts
and boxes the complete 50 caliber machine guns to fill in the spot. These
will not be seen once the nose section is glued on. I would recommend
leaving these parts out and utilize the gain space for the ballast weight.
There is no indication in the instructions on how much weight you will
require. The fitting of the 50 caliber gun barrels will be an easy to fit
with some CA/super glue, once that area filled with the ballast weight. If
you’re doing a scheme with the bat or face that a lot of B-25’s wore,
it may easier to add the barrels once that area has been decaled or
painted.
The decals have hardly any carrier
film surrounding them and have nice colour registers.
The two optional schemes supplied in
the kit are, a Natural Metal Finished B-25J-32 called “Sunday Punch” of the
12th Bomb Group, CBI 1945. Sunday Punch wears a pinup girl lying on her back
underneath the cockpit and snarling fanged face painted on the front. This
airframe also carriers the strap-on gun packs.
The second option is a Olive
Drab over Neutral Gray, B-25J-10, 44-29375, of the 17th Reconnaissance
(Bomb) Squadron, 31st TRG, Lingayen, Luzon, 1945. This B-25 doesn’t
carrier any kind of nose art or pinup girls.
The detail of this kit is well done,
and would look great once built out of the box. If someone went the extra step
and re-scribed the kit and added some aftermarket products, you surly would have
an outstanding model that would look excellent next to other B-25 variants from
other manufactures.
I would like to thank the team at Hobby
Link Japan, for supplying this review sample.
Dave Johnson
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