Anigrand Craftswork 1/72
XA2J-1 Super Savage

Background

The North American AJ Savage was a carrier-based bomber that started development during World War 2. The Savage featured supercharged R2800 radial engines that were rated at 2500 horsepower apiece. With the availability of turbine power, a single Allison J33 was mounted in the rear fuselage to provide augmented power for take-off and high-speed dashes into the target.

The A2J Super Savage was designed as the replacement for the AJ to address some of the performance problems faced by the piston and turbine-powered compound aircraft. The A2J replaced the piston engines with a pair of Allison T40 turboprop engines turning counter-rotating propellers. With each engine producing over 5000 shp, the contrarotating propellers were the only way to translate torque to thrust without excessively long propeller blades.

The T40 was also slated to power the A2D Skyshark and XF-84H Thunderscreeck, but after a number of engine-related mishaps, these programs were all scrapped. Had the engine proven reliable, the Super Savage would have had great performance and proved much safer for carrier operations.

The Kit

Anigrand Craftswork has returned with a new-tool rendition of the North American XA2J-1 Super Savage. Previous attempts at producing the Savage have been less than successful and Anigrand stepped up with this their AJ released earlier this year. This release picks up the story with the aborted Super Savage follow-on. Let's take a look.

Cast in tan resin, the XA2J kit is laid out in standard Anigrand fashion with hollow-cast fuselage halves, plug-in wing halves and tail, hollow-cast engine nacelles, and white metal landing gear.

The cockpit has detailing cast into the interior side walls and a nice flight deck to install inside. This is one project where you'll want to detail out the cockpit because the clear resin canopy is nicely done and will reveal all of your work.

Speaking of nicely done, the Nostalgic Plastic version of this kit comes with a CD-ROM with nice references and photos to help you build and accurately detail out this model. There is a good articls that will acquaint you with the aircraft. There are two folders of images, one containing pages out of the aircraft's manual, the other being a photo walk-around of the Super Savage pulled together out of the DoD archives.

Did I mention white metal landing gear? Kudos to Nostalgic Plastic and Anigrand for designing this kit with metal gear to make the final model more durable!

Markings

Markings are provided for the bare metal prototype XA2J-1 Super Savage.

Conclusion

Anigrand continues to turn out some interesting subjects to fill in the gaps of aviation history for those aircraft that didn't get past flight test. Congratulations on this nice Super Savage kit!

Definitely recommended!

My sincere thanks to the US importer, Nostalgic Plastic for this review sample!