A review of 2 Land Rover Kits - Airfix and JB Models

Royal Marines LWB Land Rover

by Jorge Del Rio

While I was stationed in Europe I came to meet with two groups of British troopers that greatly impressed me. The British Royal Marines and the Royal Air Force Regiment, both of these used the Land Rover 1 ton truck as an operational vehicle. The Royal Marines also use another vehicle that I have been tracking and will continue to track until I find it - the BV206.

Airfix and JB Models Kits

Well, in my Twilight 2000 universe, the elements of the 5^th Infantry encountered an Intelligence Gathering Team from the Royal Marine Commandos, the group is using 2 Land Rover Long Wheel Base trucks and ¼ ton trailers to carry their equipment. So I have two of the trucks and trailers for the signal intelligence team. Looking on eBay I managed to locate 5 Land Rover LWB with trailers, 3 Hard Shell covered Land Rovers and 2 Soft Canvas covered trucks. In 1/72 HO Scale I found most of the vehicles were either 3d printed or Airfix models, so off I went and got them.

I received 4 Airfix Land Rovers and a JB Models Land Rover, first thing I noticed was that both kits were identical, except the hard cover was different, and since I have all this extra time on my hands (am recovering from ankle surgery) I decided to go ahead and knock these out.

The sprue for both kits!

Started the Airfix kit and 10 minutes later it was finished. The model was very easy to put together and very clean in the parts everything fit, I decided that I was going to add a crew for the vehicle, so using the Elhiem Figures OPS11 British Osprey WMIK crew the driver and a sitting GPMG gunner fit into the vehicle. I will add back packs and other gear using from Black Dog’s Modern Soldiers Gear, it will go into the back of the Land Rover.

A work in progress

The assembled kit, plus the Ehliem figures.

Each of the kits of the kits has ¼ Trailers which I am going to use for the carrying of the surveillance and Radio intercept equipment, one of the trailers will be built into a command container, the marines would have set up a remote listening post in the field, capable of listening to Soviet transmissions.