ITALERI/DRAGON 1:72 MiG-15 FAGOT

Reviewer: Craig Caldwell  (rec.models.scale)

The MiG-15 lays claim to being the first Soviet made Jet to be involved in real conflict events, that of course being the Korean War.  Graced with the armory of two cannons, a 37 mm and 23 mm, the MiG-15 was a potentially superior adversary to the F-86 Sabre in the aforementioned conflict.  It could fly faster and higher than the F-86 but was let down by inexperienced pilots.  The MiG-15 ended being employed by a number of communist sympathisers such as China, Albania and North Korea.

Italeri's kit of this example is now getting old and also wears the badge of Dragon in some modelling circles (see footnote below).  The difference between the two kits is simply the decal sheet, the Dragon kit offering more examples.

The kit is molded in light grey plastic with engraved panel lines.  The first thing you spot on inspection of the parts is that the clear canopy has a thick attachment to the clear sprue and is going to need some expert manipulating to get detached without gouging or scratching the surface where it is joined!

Cockpit is a bit underdone with stick, instrument panel with raised detail and seat but not much more.  I used typical Russian blue/green interior as the cockpit colour and did some small detailing with stretched sprue bits for sidewall detail.  This spruced things up a bit but the kit provides barely enough to quench even the most modest of interior buffs!

The fuselage halves affix quite well and traps in place the nose intake trunk that is a bit too shallow for my liking.  I also added in some nose weight, kits like this one are notorious for being tail sitters.  Even then you need to be clever about how and where you place the weight given that there is barely enough space in front and underneath the cockpit.  I packed in some small ball bearings with blu-tak and this served its purpose well enough.

Wings come in upper and lower pieces and any MiG-15 buff will immediately notice the inaccuracy of the wing shape.  It looks more like an F-86 wing than the one it is supposed to represent.  This is the only real downfall of the kit in accuracy and you will have to chose whether this is going to be acceptable.  They affix onto the aircraft with a little bit of persistent positioning and will require a bit of filler at the joins.  

Undercarriage is simple but effective and the gear doors are likewise depicted.  I am not convinced about the ease of fit of the doors if you build wheels down by virtue of a small trimming in the open position to prevent a slight overlap.  The canopy provides a bit of skill to sit correctly on the aircraft and needed a touch of filler to fix.

Italeri provide only Soviet markings to put on the model and I chose to finish mine in overall natural metal finish, using light grey primer and Testors Metalizer.  It should also be pointed out that the kit depicts an early era MiG-15 version, most notable by its small airbrakes.  The finish was very nice although I managed to spoil it when applying the nicely done decals.

Overall the kit comes up quite nicely except for a few inaccuracies, such as the wrongly shaped and slanted wings, lack of bulge for cannon ejector rack and positioning of the wingtip antennae.  This kit is what you would also describe as a multi-subject choice.  I think there will be some other small inaccuracies against a specific version built since it appears that it was produced to cover the generalised MiG-15.  Otherwise this is a decent little kit, especially if you are content with these small problems and worth adding to your collection.

Footnote:  I also built a Dragon kit version sometime later and its worth noting that it's exactly the same kit apart from a more expansive choice of subjects from the decal sheet.  No point in writing another review, since it would be the same as this Italeri one. I chose to finish that kit off in an Egyptian Fagot, again using Testors Metalizer.  Both examples sit nicely in my post war Russian jet aircraft collection beside the MiG-19 and MiG-17.

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MiG-15 Fagot at the USAF Museum, captured in Korean war and wearing two sets of insignia.  It is stated by modellers who have seen this aircraft that it's interior is actually coloured in Grey, but it is not known whether that was put in by USAF.