The Ukrainian firm has added yet another boxing to its 1/48 Invader family, in the form of a fully equipped drone director.
If you’re a big fan of the Douglas A-26 Invader, you surely thought you’d won the jackpot with the sheer number of versions issued by ICM, since it released its first new-tool offering in 2019.
The company has provided six different A/B-26 bomber and strafer versions, along with later counter-insurgency variants. It also gave us a USAF drone carrier, and a US Navy ‘Jig Dog’ version executing the same role. That last item – released earlier this year – oddly, came without the actual drone… although you could have bought it separately from ICM. Now, though, the JD-1D Jig Dog is available with the drone and an underwing fuel tank in the same box, via kit 48289.
For a full build of ICM’s B-26, incorporating Magic Scale Modelling’s lighting and sound system, click here
Both colour schemes from the original Jig Dog release are repeated, but this kit allows you to complete the aircraft fully loaded, with a KDA-1 drone under one wing, and the fuel tank and rack under the other. The schemes are hugely attractive if colour is a big driver in your modelling. Both comprise slight variations on the US Navy drone director livery of Engine Gray, Orange Yellow and Fluorescent Red Orange, the selected airframes being from the 1950s.
ICM’s Invaders are impressive, this particular boxing providing a wealth of parts on 12 grey styrene runners and one transparent. A common and pleasing factor that defines all these 1/48 kits is that of splendid Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp engines, each having more than 20 parts if including the exhaust stubs in that count.
For more on ICM’s 1/48 drones in a separate package, see here
The two colour schemes in this and the previous Jig Dog boxing are:
• JD-1D Invader, 89075/28/UF, VU-3, US Navy, 1950s
• JD-1D Invader, 140356/6, Naval Air Station China Lake, California, 1958
The kit is available in the UK via official importer Hannants, for £67.80.
