Yak-1b (Armory) somewhere in Russia, 1943

[Tim R-T-C]

Somewhere in the East, 1943

Sergey Lugansky of the 152th Guards Fighter Air Regiment shows off his latest kill star for the camera.



The most recent 144th aircraft pairing from Armory models of the Ukraine.

It was, like most Armory kits, a more difficult build. There were lots of parts needing sanding and lots of filler required, but a good sprue of photoetch is included and works well. This makes the set at £9.99 from Hannants great value compared to the Brengun Yak-1 which would be nearly double that for just one plane when you add the etch.

The biggest issue was the decals - although a good selection of schemes are provided (all using the iconic green and black paintwork) the artwork is only shown for one side and this is what is on the decal sheet! This must have been noticed and a second duplicate decal sheet was included (at least in my boxing) so in lieu of further information, I cut out the necessary parts for the opposite side and rearranged them to fit.

The scene was finished with some nicely detailed resin figures from North Star.

[DH106]

That photographer certainly gets around. He is taking a picture in one of my Arctic doramas, too. A small correction is needed to the North Star figure; he appears to be using a Fed-1, whereas a captured Leica III would be more likely at that stage in the Great Patriotic War. Some might think this a trivial difference, but . . .

More seriously I wonder whether the victory symbols, etc, in Soviet photos of the time were often still wet when the pictures were taken. I don't know whether pilots had individually allocated aircraft and so on.