Eastern Express – 72253 – Bomber North American B-25 C/D Mitchell

Description:

Bomber North American B-25 C/D Mitchell

Unassembled plastic model kit in 1/72 scale of a U.S. WWII bomber aircraft North American B-25 Mitchell, a medium bomber introduced in 1941 with almost 10.000 units build during the war. Served in all the theatres of the war and was operated by several countries including Soviet Union who received around 800 as part of the lend-lease program.

Produce in several variants remained in service till 60s and 70s with some operator.

C/D variants were almost identical but produced in different plants. C was the first mass production version, was armed with two .50cal machine guns in the nose and had upgraded engines. Together with the U.S. saw service with United Kingdom (as the Mitchell Mk II), Canada, China, the Netherlands and the Soviet Union.

Eastern Express kit consists of 83 parts, a quite low number for a plane of its size in 1/72 scale. The kit is an original Frog kit tooled in 1964 and released several times by different brands.

Main Fuselage and Wings

The first parts that get your attention when open the box are the biggest ones for the main fuselage and wing, each part split in two valves. Immediately you miss the panel lines everywhere, they are few and very subtle, almost nonexistent, as well as the lack of interior detail at all in the cockpit areas.

As these parts are loose a quick dry assemble try shows both will require filling and sanding for a proper mount.

Rest of the Parts

Detail parts follows the same objections seen on the biggest ones, detail is vague or too much simplified and some assemblies will not be smooth. Engines detail is very basic as wheels. Engine cowlings has the ventilation holes closed, they are just bulbs.

Clear parts are not bad casted and considering how the panel lines are done in other parts, main clear parts has even too raised panel lines for the fuselage stripes.

Box content, decal and instructions

Instruction sheet follows the trend of the kit, they are bit vague and chaotic, making it complicated to follow even if number of parts is not high, it’s simplified to just 5 steps, which means a promedy of 16 parts per step, which is too high to be clear and precise.

Decal sheet includes several marking, also one Soviet marking, but instructions just forget about decal that you may place at your own using other visual references. While markings looks good, paper of the decal sheet looks not so good.

Lastly, kit includes three equal crew figures, a strange decision as a B-25 crew usually was 5 with variations depending on the variant, but for sure not three in a C/D. Quality of the figures is pretty bad and they are really small, even below 1/76.

Our recommendation is to avoid this kit, unless you haven’t any other option. They are not specially cheap considering the poor quality, and can’t recommend it unless you are an advanced hobbyist and you are ready to re-panel the kit, fill and sand in a good proportion and spend more money in some aftermarket or scratch to improve an overall poor kit which obviously was tooled too long ago and doesn’t fit today or last 3-4 decades standards set up by other manufacturers.

To avoid you get this same kit under other brand, this kit was initially released by Frog, and later by AMT-Frog, Chematic, Eastern Express and ARK Models, plus some more.

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