Pegasus Hobbies 1/18
V-1 Flying Bomb

Background

The V-1 (German: Vergeltunswaffe 1) was the first guided missile used in war and the forerunner of today's cruise missile. The V-1 was developed at Peenemunde by the German Luftwaffe during WWII. Between June 1944 and March 29th, 1945, it was fired at targets in southeastern England and Belgium, at London and Antwerp. V-1s were launched from "ski-jump" launch sites along the French (Pas-de-Calais) and Dutch coasts until the sites were overrun by Allied forces. The underground V-1 storage depots at Saint-Leu-d’Esserent, Nucourt and Rilly La Montange, as well as the launch sites, were bombed during Operation Crossbow.

The Kit

Pegasus, until recently, was an unknown to me. In the past week I have purchased their 1/48th scale V-2 snap-together kit and this large 1/18th scale V-1 Buzz Bomb. The company is based in Montclair, California and the kits molded in China. Pocketbound Ltd., in the UK distributes them there.

The kit comes in a large tray and lid type box. This box is a little blousy, as far as it’s depth. The box art shows a V-1 in a generic camouflage of dark green above and light blue below, with a wavy demarcation line between the two colors. Lots of stencil markings in black and white are shown. The rocket is tooling along trough cloud cover. A side panel has a one paragraph history of the V-1.

Inside the box are just 12 parts on two dark green parts trees (not in a cello bag), a decal sheet in a open cello bag and the instruction sheet.

The instructions consist of a small single sheet, that is folded in the center to create 4 pages.

Page one begins with a black and white repeat of the box art, followed by the history of the V-1.

Pages two and three give 3 assembly step drawings.

Page four is the decal and painting guide. It has a top and side line drawing of the V-1 in the two color camouflage of RLM-71 dark green above and RLM-65 light blue on the bottom. However, the demarcation line between the two colors shown here is straight vs what’s shown on the box art. I guess either way is okay?

Large tree letter A holds the fuselage halves, the engine air intake screen and the small wind-driven propeller for the nose of the rocket. (4 parts) One half of the fuselage had broken off this tree due to rubbing against the other tree and no cello bag.

Large tree letter B holds: the two horizontal tail surfaces, the halves of the rocket motor housing and the upper and lower wing halves. (8 parts) The horizontal tail surfaces suffer from the fact that molten plastic was not injected into the molds tightly. This created WAVES in the surface and the crests of these waves is now standing proud of the surface. They will need to be sanded down. In front of a few of these waves is a crevace. I hope all will sand out smoothly eventually. These parts and one of the engine housing parts were also broken off the tree.

The final item in the kit is the decal sheet. This holds lots of white and black stencil markings in German.

I was a little disappointed that this kit did not include some kind of a cradle to set the V-1 on. This rocket took off from a long ramp when it was launched. It is probably very wishful thinking to expect an after-market kit of this ramp. In 1/18th scale it would be HUGE. Also, a scratch-builder’s nightmare for sure.

The engraved detail on this kit is very good. However, where most of the parts have a nice knurled surface effect molded into them, the wing halves are glass smooth. They should have had the grainy surface like the rest of the kit.

Conclusion

Except for the few exceptions mentioned above, I highly recommend this kit. It is aimed at 14 years and older, but really could be put together by much younger persons with it’s only 12 parts. It may be a little over-priced, because of the number of parts…however, they are HUGE.

I got my kit courtesy of my wallet at my local hobby shop.

Recommended.