Search the Community

Vultee Vengeance Mk.II (DW48044) 1:48 Dora Wings The A-31 Vultee Vengeance was designed and built for a French order that couldn’t be fulfilled due to Nazis overrunning the country before any deliveries could begin. The British government became interested in the design and placed an order for up to 300 airframes, by which time the aircraft had garnered the name Vengeance. It’s unusual wing design that looked like a diving bird had a 0o angle of incidence that made for an accurate dive with no lift from the wings to draw it off course. After America joined the war the type was investigated for their own use and given the number A-35 for their own and export use. Changes to the wing made it a little less accurate, but gave the pilots a better field of view, and an uprated engine gave it a bit more power. By the time the Vengeance reached British service, the losses taken by the Stukas that it had been designed to emulate gave them pause for thought, and they weren’t allocated to the European Theatre of Operation (ETO), but were instead sent to India and Burma initially, although they were later phased out in favour of more capable machines before the war’s end. They eventually found their way to an anti-malarial spraying job, as mosquitos and the malarial plague they brought with them was taking a toll on troops and locals alike. Many of them finished their days as target tugs after being stripped of their weapons. Australia made a larger order and they found them to be much the same as the British did, seeing most of them out of service late in 1944, although a few lingered for a while. The Mk.II that is the subject of this kit was a slightly improved version of the original Mk.I, with just over 500 made. The Kit This is a new tool from Dora Wings of this peculiar beast that looks more like a creature than most. We’ve not been too well-served in 1:48 before now, and with the crisis in Dora’s home country right now, it may be hard to get hold of one for a while, although please check the bottom of the review for information. Nuff said about that now. It’s brand new, and thoroughly modern, with just a hint of short-run remaining, but they really have come on in leaps and bounds since their first kit that was not-so-very-long ago. The kit arrives in a small top-opening box, and inside are ten rectangular sprues in a greenish-grey styrene, a sprue of clear parts, two frets of Photo-Etch (PE), a sheet of pre-cut vinyl masks (not pictured), two decal sheets of varying sizes, and the instruction booklet. It’s a comprehensive package, and there’s plenty of PE to help you get some serious detail into your Vengeance. Examining the sprues, there has clearly been a lot of effort expended in creating this tooling, as detail is everywhere, and it’s good quality stuff with engraved panel lines and some raised panels giving it a professional finish. All it lacks is the fine rivets that are starting to appear on some companies’ products now. Construction begins with the cockpit, which is of a larger size due to it having two crew members. The pilot’s instrument panel is a well-detailed arrangement of a PE detail part over a decal on a styrene backing, which has more styrene, PE parts and another decal added along with an angled wrap-around section, and a pair of styrene rudder pedals suspended from the rear of the console. A compass with decal fits to the right diagonal section on a PE bracket, then the floor and bulkheads are made, which doubles as the roof of the bomb bay, as is common. Two seats are built from individual sections and have PE four-point belts included for the pilot only. He also gets PE head armour and a styrene head rest on the bulkhead behind him, and a pair of side consoles that are built up in the same detailed manner as the instrument panel. The pilot’s seat is fixed to the floor on a ladder frame in front of the bulkhead and is hemmed in by the addition of the instrument panel at that point. The gunner has a complex suspension mount for his seat that mounts on the circular section of floor with some additional parts around the area. The fuselage halves have a large area of ribbing engraved into the interior that covers the cockpit and bomb bay, and is further detailed by addition of various PE and styrene parts before it is put to one side while the cockpit/bomb bay are finished off. The rear section of bulkhead is built up with PE and styrene (it’s a theme of this kit), creating the base for the mount of the twin machine guns that are made later. A radio box is also put together for later. The bomb bay can be modelled open or closed, but it would be a shame to close up the doors on all that detail. The instructions allow you to do that though, as it’s your model after all. Steps 21-29 cover the bombs with PE fins, a reservoir tank of some kind, the door mechanisms, plus adding constructional beams to detail up the bay to an excellent level. The tail wheel is also made up now with more detail, and this level of effort also extends to the twin .50cals on their mount, with sighting and bullet-shield parts, plus the twin-spade grips for those dakka-dakka moments. That’s your laundry list of assemblies complete, after which you can close up the fuselage halves on the cockpit and tail wheel assemblies, adding two more detail parts in the area behind the gunner. The top of the fuselage is open forward of the cockpit, which is rectified by adding the insert and forward bulkhead to the front, and an A-frame roll-over bar between the two crew. Attention then turns to the big radial engine up front. The Vengeance Mk.II was powered by a Wright Cyclone R-2600-19, with twin banks of pistons all present on this model. Work begins with the front bell-housing and ancillaries, which has a drive-shaft for the prop pushed through the front and held in place by a washer at the rear. Each bank of cylinders is made from front and rear halves, with a star of push-rods and wiring harness added to the front, capped off with the bell-housing. Its exhaust stubs are each made of two halves for fitting to the model, one per side. The engine assembly is attached to the front of the fuselage ready for its cowling later. The oddest part of the Vengeance are the wings. Before they are closed up, the main bay walls are added to the upper wing, which has the roof detail moulded-in, augmented by some superb PE ribbing, plus some additional detail added to the front walls. As the two wing halves are brought together, an insert is fixed into the trailing edge that has a curved outer edge to accept the flying surfaces. Two of these are made up, and joined by three flying surfaces with an additional pivot point fixed into the wing as you go along. This gives you plenty of leeway for posing these parts to your whim. The forward section of the main gear bays are built up with three additional parts too. If you’ve opted to open the bomb bay, the two bombs are attached to their Y-shaped yokes and laid flat in the bay, then the wings and the angular elevator fin are fixed in place along with the rear gun and radio box in the cockpit. It’s looking like an aircraft now, and the transformation continues as you make up the cowling from two main halves and lip parts, into which a number of detail parts are inserted to build up the shape of the lower intake trunking. Care here will reduce any hiding of seams later, which is always nice. The cooling flaps are separated into sections, and are made from PE parts to give them an in-scale look from the rear. The festival of PE parts extends to the dive-spoilers, which are able to be posed deployed with PE supports, and should look pretty realistic once painted. The elevators are rudder are all separate assemblies that can again be posed deflected at your whim. The canopy is a large goldfish bowl with plenty of frames to terrify the masking averse, but they needn’t worry, as Dora have included a set of vinyl masks in translucent grey, and pre-cut for your convenience. There are five canopy segments, beginning with the windscreen and working back to the gunner’s windows, all of which are slender and clear within the limits of injection moulding. There is a short vertical aerial on the centre section, which should be rigged with a fine line to the forward tip of the rudder fin, which is visible on the box art to assist you in getting it right. The main gear is similar to many American dive bombers, consisting of a straight, thick leg with PE oleo-scissors and detail parts, and a captive “spat” at the bottom of the leg that is a lot less usual. Four small side bay doors are also included with PE openers, and throughout the various bays, detail is good. The legs are fixed into the bays with a retraction jack added behind in a fairly complex step that also included the lower dive-spoilers and the bomb bay doors. If you’re closing up the doors, there is a single part for you to us, but leaving them open you have four parts, two per side, as the doors fold-up into a sharp V-shape at each side of the bay. A small outlet is inserted into a slot in front of the bay, and at the rear of the aircraft the tail bay door is propped up against the leg. The propeller is made from individual blades that are fixed into a central boss and locked into place with the front section that also has the spinner moulded-in. Pop the pitot probe under the right wing, and fit two circular landing lights into their recesses under box wings, and that’s it done. Markings There are a generous four decal options on the sheet, although they’re all wearing the same basic camouflage scheme, with sky blue undersides, differentiating by their codes and lettering styles, plus two of them wearing a bright white tail section. From the box you can build one of the following: A27-220 GR-A Mustafa, 24 Sqn., Nadzab, 1944 A27-240 GR-E Salome, 24 Sqn., Tivoli Girls, 1944 A27-200 NH-A Ye Boss & Y’Gotta B Kwik, 12 Sqn Commanding Officer, Sep 1943 Camden Museum of Aviation, Australia Decals are by DecoGraph, which is a guarantee of good registration, sharpness and colour density, with a thin matt carrier film cut close to the printed areas. The profiles contain thanks to both Steve Long and the director of the Camden Museum of Aviation for their assistance with this project, and the last decal option is their preserved aircraft. Conclusion This is a well-detailed model of this lesser-known combatant in the Pacific theatre during WWII, with its weird wings and massive engine cowling making it stand out on your model shelf. Highly recommended. Available in the UK in all good model shops – we hope. Review sample courtesy of Normally this would be the end of the review, but the good folks at Dora Wings sent us this sample directly, and I couldn't resist building it. It's a fabulous kit, and one of my favourites thus far. Here's a taster of the completed model, and a link to the build and to the finished model. Best regards to all at Dora Wings and the wider Ukraine.