21st Century Toys 1/32 Mc.205 Veltro Kit First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

The Macchi Mc.205 Veltro (Greyhound) was an incremental improvement in design, power and armament over the previous Mc.202 Folgore (Lightning). Both the Folgore and Veltro were powered by German Daimler-Benz engines, the DB601 powering the Folgore and the DB605 powering the Veltro. When you look at how Macchi wrapped these engines versus the nose of the Bf 109, you can see the racing pedigree in these aircraft as they looked fast sitting on the ground!

While the Mc.205 series didn't see much action with its late arrival before the Armistice, the Luftwaffe did make use of the type in combat operations alone with those Italian units that remained allied with Germany after the Armistice.

The Mc.205 would see combat briefly after World War Two when refurbished Veltros were supplied to the Egyptian Air Force were sent into action against the fledgling Israeli Air Force during the 1948 Israeli War of Independence.

21st Century Toys continues the process of offering subjects from their pre-finished and pre-assembled 1/32 aircraft lines in kit form. This aircraft looked really nice in pre-finished form, though the AMS modeler inside me wondered how these would look with some additional attention that can't be applied on the assembly lines.

The kit is molded in medium gray styrene and presented in sealed sections of plastic bags to ensure that the kit arrives in your hands in good condition. You can definitely see the heritage of these kits with the screw and cap assembly techniques

As with the pre-finished models, this model offers movable (retractable) landing gear, a sliding canopy, and movable propeller. Despite its simplicity, the kit offers some really nice detailing straight out of the box.

The kit comes with a nice decal sheet that has markings for three examples:

• Mc.205V, 1a Squadriglia, 1 Gruppo Caccia, Reggio Emilia, Italy, May 1944, as flown by Major Adriano Visconto (26 kills)
• Mc.205V, 2a Squadriglia, 1 Gruppo Caccia, Udine, Italy, early 1944
• Mc.205V, II./JG 77, Lagnasco, Italy, Nov 1943

I've seen some interesting criticism of these kits from some modelers out in the chat rooms over one issue or another. What surprises me is that many of these folks lose sight of the fact that these may be new-tool kits, but these are $10.00 kits! I might sympathize over one detail or another for a $40.00 model (or more), but think of all the paint schemes and REAL modeling you can do here by transforming this kit into the work of art you have in mind. This is exactly the same opportunity we one had decades ago when we were building box-scale Hawk kits with all of five parts in the boxes, but anything beyond that was our own skill at work.

If you don't have a Wal-Mart near you, or your Wal-Mart can't get these kits in stock, then I'm happy to report that 21st Century Toys is finally offering these kits into the regular hobby distribution market and your local retailer should be able to get you one (or more). The non-Wal-Mart pricing is a little higher, but not much more. Also keep your eys out for more online retailers carrying this line which will finally offer these nice (and inexpensive) kits to more of the international market as well.

My sincere thanks to 21st Century Toys for this review sample!