Plastic Soldier Review - BUM Pilots and Ground Crew

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BUM

Set 5012

Pilots and Ground Crew

All figures are supplied unpainted (Numbers of each pose in brackets)

Stats

Date Released	2004
Contents	12 figures and 1 vehicle
Poses	12 poses
Material	Plastic (Medium Consistency)
Colours	Black/Green

Average Height

24 mm (= 1.73 m)

Review

This set from BUM certainly represents something a bit different from our normal fare. The centrepiece of this set is the starter truck, in this case an AS-2 as used by the Soviet air force. Starter trucks were introduced to replace the hazardous practice of 'swinging the prop' (pulling on the propeller by a mechanic) to get an aircraft's engines started. The long 'claw' protruding over the cab was fitted to a suitable propeller and then rotated to get the engine going. This method was in common use during the 1920s and 1930s by most nations, but the length of time required to get whole squadrons of planes airborne meant it had largely disappeared by 1945 in favour of on-board starter motors.

This kind of kit is not within the scope of this site, and is only included for completeness of the BUM range. However reviews of the original UM kit, supplied under licence by BUM, suggest it to be a pretty good kit, although we found it to be quite a complex one. It seems reasonable to suppose that such a vehicle could be found on the airfields of Republican Spain during the civil war in view of the large amount of Soviet aircraft aid.

Aside from the vehicle the box contains a dozen figures as shown. They're hard to make out here, but that doesn't matter because they are the same figures as those in the LW 'Soviet Pilots' set already reviewed. Therefore our comments in that review apply here, and again their presence in Spain would seem reasonable.

An unusual and unfamiliar vehicle kit plus a reissue of Soviet air force figures may not do much to expand coverage of the Spanish Civil War, but it makes an interesting addition to a Republican airfield scene of those years.

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