Azur 1/72 Bloch MB.155

AZUR 1:72 BLOCH MB.155
'INBOX Review'

Reviewer: Carlos Giani (carlos_giani2002@yahoo.de)

Kit: Azur 1/72^nd scale Bloch MB.155 (Kit N° 008 ). Produced in the Czech Republic

Aircraft: Whilst the production of the MB.151 and MB.152 was going on, SNCASO (the nationalized fusion of Bloch and Bleriot from 1937) began with the design of an improved version, given the very promising results obtained with the basic design. The new hope was to obtain an improvement in speed, manoeuvrability and range.

Unfortunately for the designers, pressure came from the officials, so that most of the tooling for the MB151/152 had to be retained, to accelerate the start of the production. For this reason, only the range could realy be improved, by installing an enlarged fuel tank which needed the cockpit to be drown backwards. Also slight modifications were done on the wing, and a new, more aerodynamic engine cowling was introduced.

After successful first trials, production began on May 1940, with the addition of armored windshield and plates. By the time of the capitulation (25th June), no plane had seen action, but nevertheless some 29 were built, which were sent to the Vichy government. Finally this planes, together with some new ordered, served with the Luftwaffe. The further development of the Bloch 150er-Series, the MB.157 with a new 1700 HP engine, could have been a formidable weapon; the only prototype, flown by the Germans, reached a top speed of 710 kph (in 1942!).

Parts: Inside a typical „Czech“ end-opening box you get a plastic bag which contains one sprue with 35 light grey parts and one vacu-canopy (no spare), a small bag with 22 resin parts and another bag with the decals, an acetate dials-film and a little PE-brass plate. The instructions complete the contents of the box. The styrene parts are crisp molded, have little flash, finely engraved panel lines and regular short-run sprue's gates; there are some heavy ejector pin extrusions to eliminate. All in all, quality reveals the membership to the MPM-family.

For the cockpit you get a floor with molded-on pedals and rails, a seat which includes PE-belts, a control stick, a rear bulkhead / radio compartment deck, a central PE-console and a styrene instrument panel. For both the later and the central console you get a dial acetate-film and a PE-front panel. This subassembly is then trapped between the fuselage halves, which have a few vertical frame bars molded on. Fortunately, there are guides inside the halves to help right positioning of the cockpit.

The wing is a classical three-piece, with the wheel wells partially enclosed (just an upper bulkhead). Of course there are no locating pins anywhere, and the one-piece (strutted from downside) elevators are also but-jointed to the rear fuselage. Next comes the engine, which consists of one resin „engine block“ and 14 resin cylinders, which means a lot of tedious clean-up and „align-them-well“ work. On the other hand, patience will be rewarded with a beautiful Gnome-Rhone 14N49. The engine is trapped between to half-cowlings and this assembly but-joints to the fuselage. Last step in this area is to glue the air intake and the two exhausts, the later being scratch-built.

The landing gear is conventional, with leg, actuator and one acceptable thin well door. At the rear there's no wheel but a skid. Now the instructions says to install the vacu-formed canopy, which of course must be carefully cut out and trimmed. The first attempt must be successful, since there's no spare included. Pitot tube and the two wing-mounted machine guns are resin. Now to the real pain: the propeller. The separate blades must be but-jointed to the (conical) propeller hub!!! (I hate this system). Well, good luck and may the force be with you!.

Instructions: Two A4 sheets folded to generate an 8-pages booklet. Page one brings the usual history in English, Czech, German and French, page two shows a numbered sprues layout for all parts, pages three to six brings the building instructions in 9 easy-to-follow-but-a-bit-imprecise steps, and finally pages seven and eight shows 3-view colouring/decaling diagrams for 3 versions. Detail and camouflage painting callouts are given just names, with no code of any brand nor FS numbers.

Versions:

1) French Air Force, N°708 GC II/8, Group Commanders plane, 1940

2) Vichy Air Force, N°704 L´Escadrille I, GCI/8

3) Luftwaffe, 1942

All versions are painted upper brown (HF3, maybe H29 or H118), upper khaki (HF1, maybe H159 [*]), upper dark blue grey (HF5, matches good to H79) and lower light blue grey (HF4, a difficult color, maybe a mix from H144 and H176, or Revell N°79). The Vichy-plane has red-yellow stripes on the cowing and the stabilizer.

Decals: Printed by the Italian firm Cartograf, they are thin and with very transparent carrier film. They look great, although I'm not sure if the French blue shade is correct.

Detail: Very pleasant, as it is usual with (good) multimedia products. Nice cockpit, beautiful engine.

Options: The German version has no machine guns.

Impressions: Looks good, without more than short-run average difficulties (except for the propeller). Comparisons with a little diagram I've found reveals no major flaws, although it seems that the MB155 had a tail wheel instead of the MB152´s skid. Quality is at MPM-Special Hobby level.

Recommendations: Hey, not even Heller has a lot of French WW2 planes, so that each addition to this sector is warmly recommended. Not for the beginner.

[*] I still own some HF1 „Khaki“, and this is a very dark greenish color. Humbrol´s khaki N° 26 is far, far away from it.

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