Sheet #

 Aeromaster 48-456: Birth of the Luftwaffe Pt 1

Price:

 $7.80

Units:

 JG's 130, 132, 135, & 137

Review By:

Scott Van Aken

Notes:

 

 

In case you haven't been paying attention to the decal market in the last year or so, there has been an interesting trend. Decal makers are now starting to tie in their sheets with books. Eagle Cals has been doing this with their Fw-190 books and ADS has produced a few sheets along with Classic Publications books on the Me-262 and JV-44.

Now Aeromaster has joined this group and is publishing decals based on the drawings and photos in Classic Publications new series of soft cover books on the Jagdwaffe, the fighter arm of the Luftwaffe.

Also new with Aeromaster is the depiction of all subjects in the sheet on the title sheet for the decal. A good move, in my opinion.

Their first sheet covers the He-51 and early Bf-109s. Taking it from the top of the cover sheet, we have a 109B-2, red 3, of JG 132 in RLM 70/71/65, a pretty standard scheme for the time and the scheme for the other 109s. Next is a D-1, also of JG 132. The final 109 is a C-1, white 10 of JG 130.

The next two are Heinkel 51's. The first is from JG 135. It is in overall RLM 63 with a very nice blue nose, deck and tail band. The other is from JG 137, again in overall RLM 63 with the color in RLM 25 green.

Aeromaster provides an additional small sheet with the insignia in two parts to prevent any problems with poorly registered decals. Unfortunately, on my example, the white is out of register enough to make this additional sheet worthless.

Overall, I am quite impressed with this sheet. I know that they have also released one for the next issue which is on the Spanish Civil War. A great idea and one that will surely sell well. I only wish that someone did a 1/48 Ar-68 as there were a number of excellent schemes for this aircraft as well.