Quickboost

1/72 A3D-1/A3D-2 Skywarrior Early Version Tail Gun Turret For the Hasegawa Kit

Stock Number: QB 72205

Reviewed By  Charles Landrum, IPMS# 26328

MSRP: : €3.30 (approx $4.75) Website: www.quickboost.net The Hasegawa 1/72 A-3 Skywarrior kit has been on the shelves for over 10 years and has been offered in a variety of variants. If you wanted the early nuclear strike bomber variant with the tail gun and pointed radome, then you either sought the rare "A3D-2 Early Version" boxing by Hasegawa or used the resin conversion by Maintrack models. The tail gunned version made the early operational deployments and was later relegated to test and evaluation or composite squadrons. Some of the early electronic warfare versions even retained the tail gun initially. While the tail gun version could be found in the gloss sea blue scheme, it was also found in gull gray over white. Now Quickboost provides a third option to revert the A-3 to its original mission. QB has released the nose cone and now the tail gun assembly, which is the subject of this review. The QB detail set provides the turreted tail gun section and the cannons in crisp durable resin. The detail is superb, with lots of molded detail including panel lines of equal quality to that of the kit. The gun barrels are quite detailed. It is a conversion far more detailed than the conversion offered by Maintrack models. Instructions are provided and call for the removal of the after tail section, below the rudder. I tried the conversion on my A-3B kit. Quick work by the razor saw removed the requisite portion of the fuselage. With the pour block removed, the tail gun section mounted up nicely and matched the contours and panel lines of the kit fuselage.

With this set and QB 72189 (the early nose), the modeler can easily backdate the Hasegawa kit to an earlier Whale, without the trouble and expense of tracking down the out-of-production Hasegawa kit. It opens up the possibility of any number of additional configurations, especially if you can track down the IPMS USA National Convention sheet from 2002 (by Cutting Edge), which featured several gloss sea blue Whales. Highly recommended. I would like to thank Quickboost for these review samples.