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Revell 1/32 Renwal Teracruzer and Mace Missile

By Mike Whye

With a heavy thump similar to the 1950s-era Renwal Atomic Cannon kit that landed in my lap a few months ago, Revell has released another kit from the same era--the 1/32 Renwal Teracruzer with Mace Missile.  Yup, it's another big kit in a big box.  This box measures about 16.5 x 22 inches x 4.5 inches--I think it could contain four Monogram 1/72 B-52 kits.

First, a history of the real Mace

After WWII, the U.S. wanted surface-to-surface tactical missiles that carried conventional or nuclear warheads.  Following the studies done on the captured German rockets, the Glenn Martin Company developed the B-61 Matador which was also known as the TM-61A or MGM-1 (Mobile Ground Missile). Basically a super-sized follow-on to the German V-1, the Matador could receive in-flight instructions radioed to it from a command station.  It was also designed to be launched from a mobile unit.

For all purposes, the Matador was the United States' first cruise missile. The Matador first flew in 1949, was operational by 1953 with U.S. Air Force units and was retired in 1963. Although designed to carry a 2,000-pound conventional warhead, practically all Matadors carried the W-5 nuclear warhead when based in West Germany, South Korea and Taiwan.  As designed, the Matador had a pointed nose and its wings were situated about halfway up the sides of the fuselage. Also, its wings had to be carried on another transporter and attached to the fuselage just before launch.

Further development of the Matador led to the creation of the TM-61B; that was renamed as a new missile, the Mace, which received the official designation of TM-76 (Tactical Missile). The Mace - at 44 feet - was longer than the Matador - at about 29 feet - although it had a narrower wingspan (23 feet versus 38 feet) but it weighed 18,000 pounds versus 12,000 pounds for the Matador.

The Mace was also easily distinguished from the Matador by its rounded nose and wings mounted at the top of the fuselage.  The Mace's wings could be folded back alongside the fuselage like some WWII U.S. Navy carrier aircraft so the entire missile could be carried by just one transporter.

Both used solid fuel 50,000-pound-thrust solid-fuel boosters for a fast takeoff and flew about 650 miles an hour before shedding their wings with explosive cords to go supersonic in their final dives to their targets.

Although the Mace may look like a rocket at first glance, it used the air-breathing Allison J33-A41 turbo-jet which produced 5,200 pounds of thrust. The air intake was on the underside of the fuselage near the wings. Because it used a jet engine that was also used on P-80s, T-33s and other aircraft, the Mace could be serviced by jet engine mechanics rather than rocket engine specialists.  The Matador had a range of 650 miles whereas the first version of the Mace could fly up to 800 miles after launch.  The Matador's W-5 warhead had a yield up to 70 kilotons whereas the Mk-28 warhead carried by the Mace had a yield up to nearly 2 megatons.

The first operational version of the Mace, which was also designed and built by Martin, was also called the MGM-13A, or Mace A. This was launched from a mobile trailer, also called the translauncher, which was pulled by a tractor unit called the Teracruzer. A nine-man crew needed at least 43 minutes to prepare the Mace for firing at a remote location. 

The Mace's guidance system compared a series of filmstrips to radar images of the ground below and corrected the missile's flight path until the radar image matched the film images. The military called it a "fire and forget" missile which was impervious to enemy radio signals. However, over featureless bodies of water, this guidance system was said by some to be worthless.

For several reasons, the portable launch system was abandoned after about 18 months, and the Mace A missiles were then based at fixed sites on their launch trailers in multiples of four until hardened launch facilities could be built for the later version of the Mace--the Mace B which was also called the CGM-13 (Container Ground Missile).

Identical in size to the Mace A, the Mace B had a 1,400-mile range and used a new guidance system which had five gyros that required using a known fixed point at launch. Thus, the Mace B had to be fired from fixed hardened sites although some were fired from translaunchers during tests done in the U.S. which might explain why a Mace B is on a translauncher at the U.S. Air Force Weapons Museum at Eglin AFB in Florida.

First launched in 1956, Mace missiles were operational in West Germany in 1959 and were later deployed in South Korea and Okinawa. With the introduction of the Mace B in 1961, the Mace A's were phased out leaving only the Mace B's on duty in Europe until 1969 when they were retired in favor of the U.S. Army's MGM-31A Pershing missile despite the Pershing having only half the range of the Mace B (for those wondering why the Army also had ground-to-ground missiles when the Air Force did too, a 1956 ruling by the Secretary of Defense stated that the Army's missiles could have a maximum range of 200 miles while those that went further were to be controlled by the Air Force).

Mace B's in Japan were removed from duty in 1971.

About 1,200 Mace missiles were manufactured at a cost of $452,000 each, and some continued serving the U.S. until May 1977 when the last one was launched as an MQM13, a target drone.  One drone withstood hits by Sidewinder missiles and 20mm cannon fire and continued on from the test range to fly over Cuba before disappearing when its fuel supply ran out.  Somehow, nothing came of this incident diplomatically.  Much confusion has arisen over the nomenclature of the Mace missiles because their official designations were changed several times during their lifetimes.

For clarification as to what Mace was what, visit this page at the Directory of U.S. Military Rockets and Missiles.

The Real Teracruzer

The Teracruzer that transported Mace A missiles was officially called the MM1 and had many interesting features.  The driver could change its balloon-like Teratires' air pressure from high for rolling down the highway to low for off-road excursions. Powered by an 8-cylinder engine that used 145-octane aviation fuel (which should not have been all that hard for its crews to obtain--they were Air Force, after all....).

Made by FWD Corp. of Clintonville, Wisconsin, each Teracruzer cost about $36,000. Top speed was 25 mph.  A Teracruzer pulled a TM-61B in President Dwight Eisenhower's second inaugural parade in 1957 (a picture shows "Matador" painted on the missile's fuselage but that was before the TM-61B was renamed as the Mace).

The Air Force bought 189 Teracruzers and after being discarded by the military, many were used by private contractors to move heavy equipment. Some hauled dirt in the Netherlands and at least one was operating as recently as 2010 in the Alaskan gold fields.  One interesting note of the Teracruzers when hauling the Mace missiles: when being transported from point to point, a Mace did not have the forward quarter of its fuselage which contained the warhead and the guidance system. Those were carried in a separate vehicle and attached when the missile was being prepared to be fired.

Mace A missiles (the type transported by the Teracruzers and as depicted in the Renwal kit) had unpainted aluminum bodies and usually the nose cones were olive drab.  The Mace B missiles were overall aluminum.  The few Mace missiles that are on public display nowadays have a variety of nose cone colors and should not be trusted as being the colors the missiles used when operational.

The above information about the real Mace missiles and the Teracruzer came from "U.S. Air Force Ground Launched Cruise Missiles," a 1992 report written by Lt. Col. Randall Lanning, USAF; and "U.S. Air Force Tactical Missiles, 1949-1969 The Pioneers," a book written by George Mindling and Robert Bolton.

The Kit

Did I mention this is a big kit?  If you're expecting this to be a kit from the 1950s and early 1960s with a half-dozen so-so-formed pieces that glue together in 45 seconds, you're wrong.  As said on the box top, the kit has 278 pieces and a 20-page instruction book.

This kit actually has three sub-kits: the Mace missile which measures 15.5 inches long when assembled; six sprues holding pieces for the Teracruzer cab with its fuel/power units; and two sprues with pieces to build the launcher supporting the missile. Each sub-kit is in its own plastic bag with its open end folded over and taped shut. By the time I opened the box, a few pieces had already separated from the sprues so it might be wise to keep each sub-kit in its own bag until you're ready to assemble it.

This kit has no clear plastic parts. That's quite a shortcoming for a kit that has nine windows in the driver's cab. So get out your thin sheet of clear plastic and be ready to cut out the windows you need.

This kit's pieces have ID numbers on the sprues and pieces and are very easy to read.  The only area that I see for concern is the interior of the cab doors which have both ejection pin marks and ID numbers; you can sand those away easily but there's no detail on the door interiors so either leave them closed or just slightly open so the lack of interior is not seen.

The pieces are crisp and formed very well in medium-gray styrene. The only exceptions are the figures, each of which has a very visible sink hole and has overly-soft contours (think of figures made of soft putty).

Overall, all other pieces look fine, have no sinkholes or ejector pin marks that will show once the kit is finished except for those on the inside of the cab doors as I noted a few moments ago. I saw only a couple bits of flash.

The kit also has seemingly countless wheel halves to form the twelve tires under the vehicles plus one spare carried behind the cab.

Instructions and Decals

The instruction booklet is quite thorough and the colors of paints that are needed are called out well although just by generic names, like orange, rather than specific FS colors or particular paints by a particular paint manufacturer.  Construction looks very straight forward starting with the Teracruzer cab, then the translauncher and finally the missile which is only 15 pieces. 

The decals, which are few, look fine. The decals for the missile appear to represent the markings of a test missile with white letters and stars and bars to be displayed atop each wing and on the aft fuselage.

To display an operational Mace A, you'll find a variety of markings on photos found on the Internet-- white letters or black letters for "U.S. Air Force" on the fuselage; stars and bars and "USAF" on both upper and lower wings as typically found on most USAF aircraft of that period; and black tail numbers and red turbine stripes (neither of which are in the kit's decals). Sometimes the stars and bars on the fuselages of the real missiles were are aft of the wings and other times they're ahead of the wings.

The Kit and Reality

As is obvious, the kit allows you to build a complete Mace being carried by its Teracruzer cab and translauncher. The kit states to paint the Mace missile orange but if you study photos of the real Mace missiles, you'll see you have a some choices.  Orange is fine for test versions of the missile. Or you can create an operational Mace A by painting the body aluminum and its nose cap olive drab. Or you can create another test missile, a Mace B, which was sometimes fired from launch trailers at Cape Canaveral (now the Kennedy Space Center) so those would have been overall aluminum.

The kit's tires represent reality fairly at best; compare them to photos of the real ones and you'll see each raised ridge on the tire has a small dog leg near where the tire halves meet whereas the tread on the left and right halves of the kit's tires meet as a simple V at a middle seam.

On most color photos of real Teracruzers and translaunchers, the lettering is yellow, not white which is what the decals are; however, a launch trailer I photographed last year at the U.S. Air Force Weapons Museum at Eglin AFB, Florida, has white lettering.  Also, on two places on the front of the cab, the logo of the FWD Company is painted yellow, like all other lettering on the vehicles--the kit has no decals for this marking although the FWD logo is raised so at least you can paint them.

Note that the missile's engine exhaust port and the tail end of the booster rocket's nozzle are not sealed visibly, thus allowing someone to look up into those items. You'll need to do some work to visibly seal off these areas.

The kit can be displayed in various ways. 1) As though the entire assembly is at a launch site (remember, during transport, the front quarter of the missile was carried on another vehicle and mated to the missile just before launch) with the missile in the up or down position; 2) with the missile in a upraised launch position on the trailer with the Teracruzer out of the way, as the launch crews did when launching the Mace; 3) with the Mace's wings deployed or folded; and 4) with the translauncher's jacks retracted or extended.

Summary

Although there are some faults - which I'd regard as minor faults - with this kit, it should build up into a great representation of a Mace missile being carried on its translauncher and pulled by a Teracruzer.  When complete, I'm guessing this kit measures about 20 inches from the front to back.

Its suggested retail price is $69.95 and our thanks to Revell for sending the review sample.