Anyone who has flown combat sorties in the last 40 years probably knows all about the SA-2 "Guideline". This rather large surface to air missile has been used by Soviet Bloc countries since the mid-1960s. It was probably most successful over the skies of North Vietnam, mostly due to the number of sorties flown by Allied forces. In fact, so heavy was the use of the SA2 that the North Vietnamese actually ran out of missiles. Thanks to skillful diplomacy of North Vietnamese negotiators in Paris, the wool was pulled over the eyes of the Americans and there was a bombing halt. During this time the North Vietnamese were able to resupply, all without American forces realizing how perilously close they were to being able to attack targets in the north with relative impunity. It only goes to show you that politics and war do not mix!!

The SA-2 V750VK anti-aircraft missile required ground tracking of the target and was not a 'fire and forget' type of missile. Once the missile got close enough to the target, a proximity fuse exploded the warhead and shrapnel from the missile then spread all over the sky. Hopefully for the defending forces, this shrapnel would damage the aircraft enough to bring it down.

Fortunately for the Americans, an SA-2 was captured intact by the Israelis in the 1967 war with Egypt. This enabled countermeasures to be developed. It was also a rather large missile, likened by pilots to a 'flying telephone pole'. As such it was possible to outmaneuver the missile and cause it to lose lock. SAM suppression aircraft (wild weasels) were also developed along with tactics for destroying the guidance sites for the missiles as well as the missiles themselves.

Nonetheless, the SA-2 can lay claim to being the first truly successful Surface to Air missile system.

 

THE KIT

My first thought was that this was a copy of the Trumpeter 1/35 kit, but comparing the sprues showed that it just wasn't the case. Of course, it could also be a copy of the Airfix kit, but again, that doesn't seem to match up at all either. This is a new tool kit. Not only that, but it is cheap! Yes, no longer do you have to fork out major money for the Planet Resin kit or the old Airfix version. This one is on two buff sprues with good detail; all of it raised, by the way.

There are a bit more than two dozen parts to this one and what you get is basically one missile (that's on one sprue) and the launcher (that's on the other). The parts are free of ejector pin marks where they can be seen, have almost no flash and I found sink areas only on the missile body, opposite some rather large ejector towers.

There is almost no English in the instructions but really, the instructions are quite easy to follow so none are needed. The five construction diagrams are pretty straight-forward and well drawn. The painting instructions are equally easy to follow as the launcher is Khaki Green and the missile Aluminum. I'm sure you could paint the missile a number of other colors as well. They were often painted to match local conditions. Decals are by ProDecals and are nice and thin. I've had some problems with them being easily damaged, but in the case of this kit, if you paint the missile body something other than Aluminum, you won't need the decal sheet.

CONCLUSIONS