Revell of Germany 1/72 Arado E.555
MSRP $17.75
Review and photos by: Bill Shanholtzer
As a Luftwaffe nut, I was really looking forward to doing this bird! I had heard that it was very detailed and I was not disappointed! The plastic is molded in light grey with very little flash. All the moldings are crisp with beautiful recess panel lines. Even the gear bays and the Bomb bay are nicely detailed! The instruction sheet is in 16 pages although the first five are for the history and building tips. There are a total of 26 building steps and three pages are dedicated to painting and decals.
As usual, assembly starts with the cockpit. It comes in six parts and is very detailed. The underside of the cockpit is also the nose gear bay. I did the cockpit area in RLM 66 and all the other interior areas such as bays in RLM 02. There is no decal for the instrument panel but the detail is crisp and looks great after drybrushing. With a little fiddling, the cockpit slips in for a perfect fit. The gun turrets are made to be fully moveable which is good as you can move 'em out of the way for fitting other details later on.
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After all the cockpit assembly, it's time to join the wing/fuselage halves together. A word of caution here. Add PLENTY of weight! It calls for 16 grams in each leading edge. I thought I had enough in but when it came time, it wouldn't sit on the nose gear. The bogey style main gear are part of the trouble. So when ya think you have enough in it, double that! I had a little trouble with alignment where the cockpit area meets the wing but otherwise the fit was fine.
The rest of assembly is pretty straight forward. I did leave the engine pod off until after painting, as it sits on small pylons and the area underneath would show.
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The kit offers two paint and decal schemes. I chose to do mine as the example on the box art. Overall is RLM 76 with RLM 75 mottling on upper surfaces. The decals are very nice and it comes with plenty of stencils. They responded well to solvaset and I had no trouble with any. I will say that I spent a solid two hours on just the decals! There is a lot to the decal sheet! Read the instructions carefully for placement of all the stencils. One page is dedicated just to that. There are approximately 20 "no step" decals, alone!
All in all, this was an excellent kit to build! And it's quite an attention getter on the shelf. I highly recommend it to any Luftwaffe nut, or to anyone who wants something unusual to do. I understand it's a bit hard to come by. I got mine out of Australia.
