Preiser

Pilots and Ground Crew. Luftwaffe. The German Reich 1935-45

Set contains six sprues molded in a medium grey colour (two each of three different sprues) for the body parts plus one sprue molded in a butterscotch/caramel colour which contains chairs and loungers. The plastic is of a nice quality, being neither too hard nor too soft. The figures come as separte pieces for torsos, legs, arms and heads. You can easily interchange parts to get a variety of poses. It appears that approximately ten figures can be built from the contents of the box.

I'm not sure how applicable the figures will be for vehicle modellers, though they may be of use in a diorama with a vehicle in Luftwaffe service or with a combination of vehicles and aircraft. I suppose it would be possible to use some of the bodies with different heads from other manufacturers to model vehicle mechanics at work. To me it seems that the capped officers would not look proper with armoured vehicle kits. There are some other useful items that could possibly be used for a diorama or as stowage/cargo on a vehicle - tables, chairs, loungers, parachute bags, metal boxes and tool boxes.

I put together one of the ground crew figures for a small airfield diorama. It glued together quite well and only had a minor seam to be removed from the parts. The creases on the clothing look nice but the facial features seemed a bit indistinct to me (but then I'm not much of an expert with regards to figures anyway). I used a combination of acrylic and enamel paints and they both worked well with the plastic as I expected.

Review sample purchased by the author.

Article Last Updated: 23 August 2009