Cutting Edge Decals 1/32
Ju 87D/G Stuka Attack Part 1

The folks at Cutting Edge Modelworls continue to turn out great aftermarket decals with some of the best instructions/color profiles on the market. In this set, we have three distinctive Ju 87s from three different areas.

The three aircraft covered in this set are:

• Ju 87D-1, J9+CK, III./St.G 1, Winter 1942, Russia
• Ju 87D-8, WrNr 148896, H5+F, Poss. NSGr.10, Surrendered at Furth, Germany, 1945
• Ju 87G, WrNr 494230, S7+BU, 10./SG.3, 1944, Riga, Latvia

What is interesting is that the first subject, J9+CK had been produced and sent to the printers with the other two subjects before the Meteor team realized they'd possibly been stumped - by the Nazis no less. Many profile artists and decal designers work from the best information they can get, and if that information is already in color, then life just got easier. Most of the time. Do you remember the trend a decade or so ago of colorizing black and white movies to 'appeal to younger audiences'? Print publications during World War 2 would also typically colorize photos that would come in from the field. Sometimes they'd get the colors right, many times they'd be close, but the average consumer of the day didn't care about color accuracy.

Fast forward to the present and here we have 'color' photos from the Nazi propaganda machine that have been repeatedly used for reference and have appeared in a variety of publications. The decals went out based on those photos, but a second look at the references revealed that these photos are colorized, and when the unit shield from the colorized image was compared to the black and white photos available, things just didn't add up. In the desire to provide us with the best product, Cutting Edge has provided BOTH shields - one set as it appears in the colorized photos, and one set as they believe it appeared.

This release also includes a Black Magic mask to make the job of replicating the wrap-around V identification marking on H5+F much easier to accomplish.

These decals will provide some nice alternatives to the 1/32 Stuka series produced by Hasegawa.

Highly recommended!

Cutting Edge Decals are available directly from Meteor Productions (the manufacturer) on their website.

My sincere thanks to Meteor Productions for this review sample!