The Little World

When I set about looking for the nickname of the Martin B10 bomber I was sent to the Lockheed Martin site. They laughingly admitted that it got this from the press of the time because of the size. However, when you look at some of the corrugated surfaces on the fuselage, they do have some resemblance to the strakes on the body of a Humpback Whale.

Call it what you like, it was the best candidate in the early 30’s for a US Army Air Corps long-range bomber. And as far as laughing at it, you need to remember that it came out at the same time as the Potez and Amiot flying blocks of flats that the French purchased and the Heyford that the British flew. I know which I’d have backed to fly in.

The kit is part of the FROMM series from Azur. I cannot work out what the hell these are in relation to the Czech Special Hobby company. Supposedly they cancelled the MPM and Azur lines in 2017 but here we are three years later with a fresh production. And googling FROMM turns up companies that produce industrial packaging and strapping. The whole lot of stuff may be issuing from a castle high in the mountains surrounded by bats…

The kit looks good in the box. Standard Czech plastic, only a few little detached or fractured parts in the plastic bag, and clear canopies. The front pilot’s station is about the size of a fighter plane cockpit but the back one – a gunner’s position – is big enough to party in. The forward turret is the sugarloaf style that lends itself to depressing the barrel of the .30 machine gun – thus depressing the spirits of enemies on the ground.

The fuselage is the slim style seen in 30’s designs – you are reminded of the Tupolev SB-2 or the Hampden – no co-piloting here. The corrugations mentioned before are noticeable but fortunately it doesn’t look like any decals are going to have to be applied over them.

I would have preferred to get a kit in this series that featured the US Army Air Corps markings as the colour scheme would be that startling blue and  yellow. However, I know what the model market is in Australia and waiting for the exact thing to come round on the sushi train of styrene is a risky venture. Often things are nearly right but the exact kit never shows up.

So I am going to build this one as the Chinese variant. They were real and saw action – and this bomber can be a good counterpoint to the Boeing P-26 and P-40 in Nationalist colours. If the USAAC kit comes along I’ll have got myself up to speed.