Chris Clifford

This magazine-format paperback (issued through the newsstand trade) was produced shortly after the re-release of Airfix's 1/24th scale kit of the Mosquito. It also coincides with the wide availability of a number of high-end kits from other manufacturers, such as 1/32nd scale examples from Tamiya and HK Models, and the 1/72nd scale offering from Hasegawa.

(Perhaps it will come as a shock to those who haven't built a plastic aircraft kit since their childhood, but these are no longer pocket money entertainments, to be bought on Friday, made on Saturday, played with on Sunday and binned on Monday. The 1/32nd scale Tamiya example, for instance, now retails at close to £200, and after-market enhancements - replacement markings, and etched brass and resin upgraded parts - can easily nearly double what the modeller paid for the kit in the first place. Even the cheapest model covered in this publication, the Hasegawa 1/72nd scale example, is a kit nowadays in the £30-plus price bracket. The other side of this coin is that the levels of detail in these models are way beyond the two-bob Airfix kits of yore that we had from Woolworth's. An extended build of one of these kits will be very much akin to building a full-size aeroplane.)

This is a high-quality publication, easily doing justice to the models whose builds are illustrated. Each of the five build articles is interspersed with historical articles detailing an aspect of the Mosquito's operational history: these cover operations in the South-East Asia theatre, operations with RAF Coastal Command and the Banff Strike Wing, the adoption oi the Mosquito by the USAAF for photo-reconnaissance duties, the mounting of the 6 pounder anti-tank gun in some Mosquitos for anti-submarine operations, and the early history of the bomber variants. The builds echo these topics. The articles are illustrated by unusual photographs and informative artwork. There are also scale plans, a description of the Mosquito Museum at Salisbury Hall (near St.Albans) which manages to incorporate the essential history of the type, a set of scale drawings and a guide to available kits, aftermarket parts and decal sheets (though it should be noted that this was a snapshot of availability at the time of publication).

It is a most informative publication and well worth acquiring if you have any interest in the type at all.… (meer)