Verlinden Productions have issued a bunch of new products that link in with the much requested 1/32 scale aircraft market – today we have built up the 2706 -1:32 USAAF WWII Refuelling Unit to look at – well see if the squeaky wheel gets the most oil or if it gets the kick…
Review: 2706 1:32
USAAF WWII Refuelling Unit
Kit No: 2706
Kit type: Resin 22pcs +
rubber strips
Scale: 1/35th
Available from: Verlinden Distributors
The parts included in the kit...
This is a long awaited Diorama accessory – two different carts for
use with 32nd scale aircraft - with the market awash with new (and
soon to come even larger) 1/32 aircraft and bomber kits I thought I was time to
have a look at this little addition to an airbase – we will show you unbuilt
and assembled pictures – and hopefully you can discern whether you would like
to add it to your scene from what we can show you.
The carts completed together (minus the pipe which is included)
This all-resin set contains parts to assemble two detailed USAAF
carts in 1:32 scale. They share common chassis and suspension, but one is a
compressor while the other holds an oil/fuel drum horizontally.
Two of the common parts to both carts - the frame and treaded tyres
The kit comes in Verlinden’s new style white box with a great colour
picture of the kit on the front – and a view hopefully of the kits potential? The
box opens up to a zip-loc bag with the twenty-two resin pieces (mostly on
casting blocks joined together) and three long rubber strips which serve as
fuel pipes and as compressor belts.
The parts of the fuel drum dolly
The cream resin pieces are the usual type used by Verlinden, I had
no air bubbles in my kit and although there was some excess resin on the kit a
very careful half an hour’s worth of trimming got rid of the excess with no
snapping or cutting the wrong parts off – don’t get me wrong you can, but you
will not break your kit if you take care and trim away slowly and surely.
The two carts are broken up into the same frame type. But they
carry different cargo – there one fuel drum reservoir and one compressor used
as a pump. Let’s look at the fuel drum type first…
The fuel drum is carried on a
four wheel dolly which is articulated at an “A” frame at the front end to
change direction under a tow. The wheels the dolly is on are of a different
tread – two to each resin mould – one with a cross pattern tread and one with a
straight lined tread on them. These wheels attach to the a frame and the dolly
rear. The wheels I think are supposed to represent fighter plane tyres used for
these makeshift carriers.
The 44 gallon drum is suitably knocked around and beaten, this will
weather up very nicely after you take off the resin stub on the bottom of the barrel
– once done this is nice and flush to the base – the whole removal of extra
resin takes 5 minutes.
The square dolly has a cut out base where the drum nestles in the frame
– this is pretty much this part of the construction done.
The compressor sits on the same “A”
frame as the fuel drum which makes sense as the engineer making these at the
airfield probably knocked out a bunch of them! The round air tank is solid
resin and sits on a stub which again is easily removed, leaving the underside
nice and round.
The compressor has many parts that can be confusing to add - check your references - However they do go on easily and look great
The small extra parts attach to the compressor easily – some of
these parts are for the attachments of the air hoses to the rubber pipes.
20-odd cm's of stretchy black plastic line - excellent stuff!
These rubber tubing had some detritus to be removed from them
before using them to attach to the barrels – I have not attached them in this
review but can assure you they are flexible and stretchy – these will function
well as either an air hose, compressor belt, or a fuel hose.
The only thing I could have used on this kit is a set of
constructions to neatly put this together. One or two references would help but
just a little search on the internet returned nothing – this is why I did not
attach the pipes until I was sure of exactly where – a set of diagrams or a PDF
download would suffice here to make sure you attached the pipes to the right
place.
Over all these go together really easily after just under an hour
of careful cutting and sanding and will paint up rather well as they have lots
of areas they can be weathered – with lots of nooks and crannies and dinted
edges on the barrel etc. Additions like the different patterned wheels just add
to the scene
A great two piece diorama set – you can see it here near my
thunderbolt – it sure does look the part and will look even better under a coat
of paint. Nicely done Verlinden.
Here it is against my test-bed P-47 - nicely to scale and it looks the part!
Adam Norenberg
A very many thanks to the people at Verlinden for the review sample used here. Below you can see how it paints up from the Verlinden website. 
