Eduard 1/48 Lancaster Bomb Racks First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

Eduard from the Czech Republic is easily the most prolific producer of aftermarket details. Period. Their series of photo-etched detail sets have brought additional fidelity to otherwise bland subjects, and have taken even the best-produced models and kicked them up a notch or two with details that cannot be produced with injection-moldedplastic.

This set consists of three frets of photo-etched details to dress up the interior of the Tamiya 1/48 Avro Lancaster B.I/B.III kit, not the Dam Buster or Grand Slam releases. While the kit bomb bay is okay, if you've looked inside the bomb bay of an actual Lancaster, you'd know just how busy it appears (look here).

Eduard has produced a series of photo-etched detail sets to completely update Tamiya's 1/48 Avro Lancaster. One of those sets is the Bomb Bay Detail set (reviewed here) which takes the bomb bay of the standard B.I/B.III bomber and adds lots of details inside of the bay including structural details and frames.

In this release, Eduard picks up where that set left off and replaces all of those styrene stubs inside the bomb bay with detailed bomb racks. When you get these details in the aircraft, you won't want to bomb up the aircraft! There is no way you'd want to obscure these details with mere bombs.

While this set will really set off the detail in the P-40 kit, this detail set is not for the beginning modeler. You will need to be able to remove the photo-etch parts from their frets (simple once you know how) and then be able to apply these details using cyano adhesives without gluing yourself to the kit parts. It isn't difficult, or else these sets wouldn't be so popular.

You should be able to find this detail set at your local hobby retailer or one of the many online hobby shops. Trust me, this is worth looking for!

My sincere thanks to Eduard for this review sample!