Academy – 12587 – USN PV-1 “Patrol bomber”

Description:

Unassembled plastic model kit in 1/72 scale of a U.S. Lockheed Ventura maritime patrol bomber introduced in 1941 and produced in over 3000 examples.

This kit was originally tooled under Academy-Minicraft brand in 1987 and has been long since reissued for last time, around mid 2010s under Minicraft brand. This mean it’s a quite old enough kit far from today best standards that might be taken by some experience modelers to get its best.

An interesting discussion about the kit quality and corrections can be found at ARC forum and the Modeling Madness review by Stephen Young.

The Lockheed Ventura was widely exported, many surplus after the WWII by many different countries, but of particular interest and related to this kit release, several PV-1 did a force-landed in Soviet Union after bombing Japanese Kurile islands and the Soviet press the aircrafts into their own service. The kit offers one marking for one of these aircraft, the other markings are for the U.S. Navy or U.S. Air Force.