The Little World

Veltro apparently means ” greyhound ” in Italian and I cannot think of a better image for this WWII fighter. The long snout and the ability to fly at high speed are the first things that come to mind, but when you watch the canine greyhounds you see another characteristic of them; the habit of lying immobile for long periods. Is this trying to tell us something about the Italian Air Force?

Well, I am happy to be able to report that the Italeri kit has a set of decals for this aircraft that allow it to be depicted in the Aeronautica Cobelligerante period – and I can avoid any fasces on the wings. It looks from the colour scheme drawings that it is also a very complex camouflage pattern in green and sand – somewhat different from that of the Macchi MC 200 that was built earlier. I look forward to the challenge.

I noted as well that Italeri has been very artistic in moulding the kit in a light tan plastic – I’ll be doing the standard undercoat as usual, but it’s nice to see them helping out the junior modeller a little. This was a surprisingly effective sales technique in the 1950’s Aurora Famous Fighters series – though it did lead the impressionable kid to imagine some pretty odd colour schemes for WWII planes. The red Me 109 and the yellow A6M Zero were things that fixed themselves in your mind for a long time…

Asked to rate an Italeri kit I would put it somewhere between the Hobby Boss and the Airfix – with no prejudice to any of the brands named. There is enough detail to satisfy with this, surpassing the quick-assembly nature of Hobby Boss. Yet there is no need to go to some of the detail extreme of Airfix or the short – run Czech kits. Italeri seem to have arrived at a good balance of complexity. And of course, national preference being what it is, they know they have a market for Italian prototypes in their kit range – I am more than happy to buy my Italian planes from them. They are likely to get the details just that bit more accurate.