Kingston Vacuum Works 1/72 Sanger-Bredt Spaceplane By Michael Benolkin

History

One of the secret projects under development in Nazi Germany was the New York Bomber. Conceived by space pioneer Eugen Sanger and mathematician Irene Bredt. The flat-bottomed design is similar to today's Space Shuttle, but unlike the Shuttle, the Sanger-Bredt Spaceplane was designed to climb to an altitude of 180 miles at only Mach 10. Well below orbital velocity, the Spaceplane was designed to skip across the atmosphere until it reached New York, dropped its 3-4 ton bomb load, and then coast back to base.

If the Germans had been given a few more years to produce this design, there is no doubt that it would have been a successful new weapons system. After the war, Sanger worked for a European aerospace consortium and a revised version of his vision, the Sanger II Spaceplane, is projected to fly in 2005.

The Kit

The kit is really one vacuformed shape that represents the upper fuselage. Kingston supplied a second fuselage in my example as a spare. As you can see from the photo, my lovely assistant shows the relative size of this kit.

The remainder of the kit is fabricated from the sheet plastic also provided in the kit. The instructions booklet is well illustrated to show cutting templates for wings, tail surfaces and interior bulkheads. The kit also includes brass tubing that can be used to mount the aircraft onto a display base (not included). Feline also not included.

The kit builds up into an 11 inch display model. No decals are included, but as this is a notional design, all that would be really required are national markings that are available from either your spares box or from any WW2 Luftwaffe decal sheet.

Conclusion

This is an interesting kit of a unique subject. The retail price of this kit is $39.00 USD and is available direct from the manufacturer (877) 560-6398 or from their website (https://www.warmplastic.com)

My sincere thanks to the Kingston Vacuum Works for this review sample!