Azur 1/72 Bloch MB.155

AZUR 1:72 BLOCH MB.155

Reviewer: Carlos Giani (carlos_giani2002@yahoo.de)
Kit Review submitted: 4 January 2008

Kit Details:

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

Aircraft History:

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 increase in speed, manoeuvrability and range.

Unfortunately for the designers, a lot of pressure came from officials side, 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 really be improved, by installing an enlarged fuel tank which needed the cockpit to be drown backwards. Also slightly 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!).

The Kit:

Please take a look at the Inbox review I wrote about this Kit, which you can find here at SMAKR and includes images of the sprues etc, a summary of some of the components are set out below for interest.

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.

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.

Construction:

Construction started, as usual, with the cockpit. You get a floor with molded-on pedals, onto which a seat and a control stick are glued. The photo etched sheet provides the central console, instrument panel and seatbelts, whilst the dials represented via acetate film. I used the alternative styrene instrument panel to strengthen the PE one, and to get a better fix while gluing. A rear bulkhead and radio section roof complete the office. The interior was painted medium grey, and later the cockpit unit was glued to the right fuselage side. Some minor trimming was needed to get a good (butt-) joint of the left fuselage side. When this dried, small imperfections were filled and sanded.

Next was the wing, and I glued the upper halves to the one piece lower half, trying to get a good alignment of the leading edges. An extra flat part located over the central lower wing section avoids a “looking-through” effect into the body. The fit of the wing needed some trimming, filling and sanding, especially around the forward wing roots. The one-piece stabilizers were also butt-jointed to the tail. The engine is a beautiful resin offering, but you have to glue each one of the 14 cylinders to the crankcase. I added inlet push rods to the front of the cylinders, made from styrene rod. The engine was glued onto a blanking plate and trapped between two cowling halves. The engine revealed itself being too big in diameter, so that each cylinder head had to be carefully shortened with the X-acto knife. When all was satisfying, the motor was butt-jointed to the plane’s front, the fit being O.K.

Next, the lower engine’s oil cooler fairing was glued on, some heavy filling and sanding being needed here. At the rear, each stabilizer became a reinforcing strut and, as usual with these kind of parts, they were wrong in length (a universal producer’s illness). I also glued the rear skid at this stage, since it would be easy to paint it after the main painting was done. Well, the more painful job was yet to come: the vac-canopy. After careful cutting, trimming and sanding (with a very fine nail file), finally I could glue the dam thing on, and even could mask it with Tamiya tape without popping it into the cabin (vac-canopies don’t react well to styrene glue; superglue ruins them with its vapors). One must accept the fact: vac-canopies are hard to tackle, but also are very, very transparent! Anyway, at some point the model was ready for painting. I recommend to rescribe all panel lines, since they are very finely engraved.

I decided to make the Vichy version, and here I made a big mistake: I grounded the cowling and the tail with red, cut out strips from Tamiya tape, masked and then airbrushed yellow. After three yellow coats, the red color was still shining trough a bit. I should have done the other way: red over yellow. With cowling and tail masked, it was time to apply the lower color: mid blue-grey (“gris bleu clair”). Having no more Humbrol HF4, and after much cross-comparing I decided to use Revell R57; although it has the right shade, it is still a bit too bright. For the upper sides I wanted to start with khaki but, oh pain, my old HF1 dried out after many loyal years. Most cross over sheets recommend Humbrol H26 for HF1, but in my opinion this is wrong (please see photo) [*]; I finally decided to use HB15 (WW1 R.F.C. green)-> still too bright! The disruptive camouflage was completed with HF6 brown (“chocolate”) and HF5 dark blue-grey (“gris bleu fonce”). Next the panel lines got a wash with acrylic black, and then came an airbrushed coat of Klear. The decals performed very well, although I was not able to bring them to melt into the panel lines, even after two coats of Micro Sol. Everything was then sealed with Humbrol H135 satin clear.

The last step was to add the antenna, the pitot tube, the wing guns, the simple but sturdy landing gear, two exhausts made from contrail tube and the propeller, the later being the painful separate blades type.

Colour Schemes:

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

Decals:

Printed by the Italian firm Cartograf, they are thin and with very transparent carrier film. They look great on the model, although I’m not sure if the French blue shade is correct. For the rudder you get complete decals, or separate ones for the code and the emblem, if you prefer to paint the blue-white-red “flag” yourself (which I did).

Accuracy:

According to William Green’s “Fighters Volume 1”, ed. 1960, span should be 10,541m (146,4mm in scale) and length 9,050m (126mm). The model measures 145,08mm and 127,28 respectively; that means an error of just 1,3mm on both sectors. Nevertheless, when comparing to photographs I can’t avoid the feeling that something’s wrong with the model in the engine area; it just looks too slim (please compare the overhead photo and the sketch).

Overall:

I had to put much work on this kit, and fit of some parts was not the best. Further, there seems to be something wrong with the front section. Would I recommend this kit? Yes, definitely, for those who like unusual subjects, who don’t care to put more effort in than just “shake´n´ready” and who have some experience with short run/multimedia. I very happy with the completed model.

References:

Book mentioned above and Internet.

[*] Nevertheless, H26 is a very good match for eastern Europe khaki (e.g. Poland WW2).

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