Italeri 1/72 EB-66E Destroyer

The B-66 was developed for the United States Air Force (USAF) and is heavily based upon the United States Navy's A-3 Skywarrior, a heavy carrier-based attack aircraft. Originally, officials intended for the aircraft to be a simple development of the earlier A-3, taking advantage of being strictly land-based to dispense with unnecessary naval features. However, due to the USAF producing extensive and substantially divergent requirements, it became necessary to make considerable alterations to the design, leading to a substantial proportion of the B-66 being original rather than derived from the A-3. The B-66 retained the three-man crew arrangement of the US Navy's A-3; differences included the incorporation of ejection seats, which the A-3 had lacked.

With the start of the war in Vietnam, the USAF did not have a dedicated jamming platform. It then converted a number of RB-66s to perform this mission. It was not uncommon for an EB-66 to lead a bombing mission of other types over hostile territory.

This kit was released about the same time as their standard B-66B bomber. It differs in having different fuselage halves and some additional bits on the fuselage sprue for the myriad of antennas that this type carried.

The interior has three 3-piece seats along with an instrument panel and some consoles for the WSOs. This assembly along with the nose gear well and 20 grams of weight are installed in the fuselage halves. Then the wings are built up and they, along with the tailplanes and canopy are attached.

The next several steps concern building up the landing gear and cutting apart the main gear doors. Then the engine pods are built up and the many antennas are attached to the fuselage. For such a large model, it is really quite simple.

Instructions provide Model Master paint references. The two markings options are both in the standard SEA color scheme. The box art plane is with the 4417th CCTS at Shaw AFB in 1966. The other has a shark mouth and was with the 42nd TEWS at Korat, RTAB in 1973. The small decal sheet is nicely printed and may still be viable despite its age.

The initial B-66B was released in 1986. Twelve years later this boxing came on the market and is, like the bomber, the only injected plastic kit of this aircraft available in this scale. Based on the ease of building the B-66B kit, I can only imagine that this one would be equally as trouble free.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_B-66_Destroyer

July 2022

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