BGM-109 Tomahawk - 1/72 scale Rockets, Missiles, Drones and RPVs

Kit Review
12 Squared BGM-109 Tomahawk, 1/72 scale, kit no. 2-2
by Al Magnus
This is a typical 12 Squared kit. It comes
packaged in a plastic bag with a paper header.
There are 20 parts, crudely cast in soft, light
grey plastic, with lots of flash and large
injection gates. You can just tell from looking at
the quality of the castings, that this is not going
to be an easy kit to put together.
The instruction sheet provides an exploded parts
diagram. There are no part numbers (I have
added part numbers to aid identification in this
review). All the parts are butt joined. No
locating pins are used.
No decals are provided.
Separating and sanding the parts is the first task.
Once complete, everything needs to be checked
for fit.
The wing (part1) is designed to slide through two slots in the body (parts 2 & 3). The slots are too
small so they need to be opened up enough to get the wing through.
You have the option of modeling the kit with the air intake open (parts 8 & 9) or closed (part 10).
I chose to have it open, so I discarded part 10.
You can also add
the rocket booster
and covers (parts 11,
12, 13 & 14) which
mount to a small
indent at the rear of
the body where the
jet exhaust is
located. Since I
wanted the exhaust
to be seen, I had no
use for these parts
and they were
discarded.
With the wing slots
and the jet exhaust
looked after, I glued the body pieces together. The parts diagram is non-too clear regarding which
way to mount the wing, so make sure that the wing has the straight edge as the trailing edge.
© AC Magnus 2006

In the hope of reducing the amount of work required to finish the seam along the body join, I had
pre-sanded the parts on a flat surface, but it was to no avail. I still had the “mother of all seams”
along the entire length of the body to contend with. Some major scraping, sanding and filling was
needed to get it to disappear.
The exhaust was drilled out and I inserted a small plastic tube with the inside end blanked off.
The fins (parts 4, 5, 6 & 7) are useless. I threw mine away and replaced them with plastic card.
A maintenance dolly is included. The frame (parts 18, 19 & 20) was terrible and I replaced all the
kit parts with some Evergreen T-shaped plastic rod. I separated the casters from the bottom of the
original parts (19 & 20) and glued them to the replacement parts.
Painting preparation consisted of multiple coats of light gray primer, with sanding and filling in
between coats. Once an acceptable finish was achieved, the kit received a couple of coats of
Aeromaster Light Ghost Grey, a coat of Testors Gloss Cote to even the finish and a final coat of
Aeromaster acrylic flat. The dolly is finished in Testors Gunship Grey.
This is not an easy kit to build. Because of its small size, it won’t take long to build, but the time
is significant in respect to the size of the subject.
© AC Magnus 2006