Background

Nazi Germany during the WW2 did a lot of technically advanced projects; many of those were implemented in reality like first jet fighter, or famous King Tiger tank while there were even more in development which never left the designers room. Some of such designs were later used for construction of Allied vehicles and equipment (US or Soviet).

Blohm & Voss was founded in 19th century and initially the company was specialized in ships but then during the 30ies and WW2 they produced quite a number of aircrafts including flying boats for Luftwaffe in Hamburg. Interestingly, they also made a design of asymmetrical reconnaissance plane BV 141.

The BV P178 was designed as asymmetrical experimental jet bomber. Unlike BV 141 where the cabin was relocated to the right of the fuselage here the idea was to have the pilot’s cockpit inside the fuselage and place the Junkers Jumo 004 jet engine in a pod on the right wing. For take-off 2 solid-fuel rockets were supposed to be installed in the rear of the fuselage.

Armament of BV P178 was planned to be two 15mm MG151 cannons in the nose, a bomb inside the fuselage (500 kg) or a larger bomb (1000 kg). As it never went into prototype design stage nothing can be said about estimated performance of characteristics.

In Model Form

Until recently there were only resin kits of that unusual aircraft design. Now, Bronco models offers 2 kits:

Kit GB-7001 Dive bomber and
Kit GB-7007 with BT700 Guided missile torpedo (plus another one announced already with large torpedo, ref GB-7003).

These kits differ only in external armament and markings therefore I decided to review them together. The current in-box review would be later followed by a build review.

The Kit

The kit comes in a cardboard box with nice boxart on top and features mentioned on sides. Inside the box there are grey coloured sprues (A, C, Ca, Ce and Cr) plus clear sprue for canopy (Da). Sprues are packed in plastic bags to prevent parts falling out in case of theoretical damage during transportation. The decal sheet has a protective film on top and is also sealed in a plastic bag. Colourful A5 assembly manual contains sprue diagrams, assembly process and painting options in full colour.

The model is divided into several subassemblies – wings, fuselage, jet engine, nose with a cockpit and external weapon.

Judging from the look the moulding quality looks very nice with panel lines finely represented on wings and fuselage. The landing gear comes as multi part assembly and the tires look good enough for scale although I am sure there will be resin ones at some point to show the weight better. The landing gear bays can be assembled in folded and open variants depending on the individual needs.

The front fuselage section contains cockpit and I have to admit the detail here is impressive – separate pedals, dashboard, seat, some controls. However, there are no seatbelts. Here the manufacturer advises to put 10g counterweight, and I wonder why this is not included in the kit. The MG151 cannons are moulded into the fuselage and these are not bored.

The canopy is provided in two variants –closed as 1 clear part and open as 3 clear parts. No painting masks are included in the kit. The jet engine has 4 parts and reasonable detail on the intake blades. To mount the external weapon one has to drill out some openings and these are different depending on the kit. The bomb in 7001 kit is made of 2 parts plus separate mountings. The tails could be replaced with thinner plastic or maybe there is a resin alternative? The torpedo in kit 7007 has different mountings and made of multiparts as well.
There is also a clear part De1 that one can use as tail support, maybe for those that do not put counterweights?

The painting and marking guide provided has color codes for Mr Hobby, Hobby color, Humbrol and Tamiya paints. The marking variants are for Germany, Finland, Italy, Hungary and Romania. Of course all these are fictional so are the paint schemes. Anyway, the offered options look very appealing and some of them are quite original. The decal itself has fine detail and there are many small inscriptions here and there.

Note that 7007 kit has the same decal sheet as the stencils are similar for both, but it also includes specific decals for 2 German units. One of them has very attractive winter camouflage scheme.

Conclusion

Overall, this is a nice little kit that looks very good on sprues. There are not many parts and I am sure it will be a great subject for weekend build. Plenty of options for painting give a modeller enough ideas to build an interesting model for collection. Most likely there will appear different aftermarket options for tires, cockpit detail and maybe even the engine, but to me it looks very well out of the box.

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