Reviews : HobbyBoss US TBD-1 Devastator Torpedo Attack

This is an excellent kit. I bought it because I wanted the pre-war livery. Some highlights: Cockpit: the cockpit (the entire interior) goes together as well as any Tamiya kit. The fit is flawless. PE is not over used as it is in some kits. Really the PE is the seat belts and a couple of small pieces above the instrument panel. The instrument decals are good and settle really really nicely onto their respective panels. The fuselage joints with no issue at all. Wing root: here there was a small issue and its why the kit doesn't get 5 stars. There are notches on either side of the wing root which are supposed to line up with tabs on both halves of the fuselage. Mine didn't line up correctly. It required filing and then some putty. Its nothing major but it was a little annoying. Again, this is not a reason not to do the kit. It is just something to be cognizant of. Canopy. I ended up doing mine closed. I wanted to do it open but I found that the clear pieces provided for the open option were too thick to truly do it. In fact if you look at the instructions for that option they show the open option as being ONLY the gunner position and not the pilot. I decided it wasn't worth the trouble of dealing with that. Someone with more patience than me could probably have done it. Decals: they're great. The wings are corrugated and the decals settled really nicely into those. I did use the Tamiya Mark Fit Strong (which I use as a matter of course). But the decals are absolutely fantastic. They also release from their backing very quickly. Instructions: are easy to follow. No issues there at all