MiG-15 bis Fagot-B
MiG-15 Fagot-B

Korean War

Bronco, 1/48 scale

Reviewed by Brett Green

The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 is a jet fighter aircraft developed for the Soviet Union.

The MiG-15 was one of the first successful jet fighters to incorporate swept wings to achieve high transonic speeds.

In combat over Korea, it outclassed straight-winged jet day fighters, which were largely relegated to ground-attack roles, and was quickly countered by the similar American swept-wing North American F-86 Sabre.

When refined into the more advanced MiG-17, the basic design would again surprise the West when it proved effective against supersonic fighters such as the Republic F-105 Thunderchief and McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II in the Vietnam War of the 1960s.

The MiG-15 is believed to have been one of the most produced jet aircraft. In excess of 13,000 were manufactured. Licensed foreign production may have raised the production total to almost 18,000.

The MiG-15 remains in service with the Korean People's Army Air Force as an advanced trainer.*

Bronco is best known as a manufacturer of military subjects, but over the years they have also had a number of aircrfat releases including Horsa and DFS gliders, plus 1/48 scale P-40B Tomahawk and P-51D Mustang kits.

Their aircraft releases have been a bit hit and miss. The gliders were good but the 1/48 scale Tomahawk and Mustang kits were frankly disappointing.

It was therefore with some trepidation that I opened these boxes, but I was pleasantly surprised with what I found.

Tonight I am reviewing both the Bronco 1/48 scale MiG-15 and MiG-15 bis kits. They differ in having unique fuselage sprues, different weapons panels on the lower fuselage and different markings.

Bronco's 1/48 scale MiG-15 kits each comprise a modest 65 parts in pale grey plastic, nine parts in clear plastic and markings for five aircraft.

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Thumbnail panels:

The plastic has a very slight orange peel texture. This probably won't be noticeable under a coat of camouflage paint but a few minutes polishing with Micro Mesh cloths will prepare the plastic for a bare metal finish.

Surface details comprise fine recessed panel lines. The fuselage panel lines may be a little finer and less distinct than the wings, but they are nicely done.

Each kit has its own dedicated fuselage sprue. The differences are the shapes of the speed brakes on the lower rear fuselage. The image below shows the shape of the MiG-15...

...and this larger one below is the MiG-15 bis.

The brakes are moulded shut in both cases.

The weapons panel on the lower front fuselage is also unique for each variant. Both styles are included in each kit. The panel on the left is for the MiG-15, while the panel on the right is for the MiG-15 bis.

The cockpit sidewalls are very nicely detailed with switches, panels and cabling moulded in relief. The instructions suggest that you intall them the wrong way around though - check later illustrations that show the sidewalls in place.

The seat looks decent too, with a padded backrest and headrest moulded in place. There are no harness straps supplied though.

Strangely, the plastic instrument panel is a featuress piece of flat plastic. Bronco does offer you an instrument panel decal but in this scale I think it is reasonable to expect at least some raised bezels and switches. Considering how nice the sidewalls are, the lack of detail on the instrument panel looks like an oversight.

The intake splitter is glued to the front of the cockpit tub. The instructions recommend that you fit 5 grams of weight behind the splitter to prevent your model becoming a tail sitter. The weapons panel also acts as the lower mount for the cockpit tub.

The fuselage amd wings are moulded with large locating pegs and holes.

The rudder, flaps and ailerons are all separate parts. Although it is not mentioned in the instructions, it looks like these may all be posed to taste. In particular, the structural detail moulded onto the inside of the flaps and their wells is very nice.

The wings are broken down converntionally into upper and lower halves for the port and starboard sides. Three of the four wing fences are moulded onto the upper wings.

The undercarriage may be posed retracted or extended. Wheel hub and tyre tread detail on the all-plastic wheels are crisply rendered.

We are offered the choice of drop tanks or slipper tanks for the wings.

The canopy is supplied in two pieces so it may be posed either open of closed.

The sliding section on my sample is just a little bit cloudy.

A polish or a dip in Future will fix this in a jiffy.

Overall accuracy looks good but there is an issue with the shape of the upper trailing edge of the wing root. This is moulded with a bit of a fishtail curve but it should be a straight line from the top of the root to the end. This is one of those things that some people cannot un-see once it is seen; but it if it really bothers you it looks like it would be pretty easy to fix using putty and Dymo tape as a guide.

Markings

Markings are supplied as follows:

Five natural metal examples for the MiG-15.

Three natural metal and two camouflaged examples for the MiG-15 bis

The text description says that the camouflaged aircraft are finished in light blue lower surfaces with Dark Green abd Sand on the upper surfaces, but the illustrations seem to show a third colour - perhaps a dark brown.

Check your references!

Decals are in register and colours look good. Printing is glossy in finish.

Bronco's brand new 1/48 scale MiG-15 and MiG-15bis kits are very nice indeed.

Surface textures are good, the differences between the two variants are correctly depicted, there are plenty of useful options and overall shapes seem to be good.

This is also the first time that we have seen an early MiG-15 (pre-bis) straight from the box.

There are a couple of minor issues such as the blank instrument panel and the curved upper wing root but I'm pretty impressed overall.

I have heard from a couple of modellers including Tom Cleaver who report that fit is very good. Tom clipped the locating towers off the inside of the fuselage, which he said improved the fit even more.

These are easily Bronco's best model aircraft kits to date. I'll be interested to see where they head next!

*Historical summary adapted from Wikipedia.

Thanks to Bronco for the sample.

Text and Images Copyright © 2021 by Brett Green
Page Created 5 January, 2021
Last updated 6 January, 2021

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