History

The Breda Ba.88 Lince (Italian: Lynx) was a ground-attack aircraft used by the Italian Regia Aeronautica during World War II. Although its streamlined external shape and retractable undercarriage made it look highly advanced for the time, its operational career was cut short when the production aircraft were loaded down with military equipment, resulting in a greatly reduced performance. It represented, perhaps, the most remarkable failure of any operational aircraft to see service in World War II.

The kit

Packed in a top opening box with a painted picture of the aircraft banking away from the viewer gives this aircraft a very streamlined look and should help promote the kit of this little modelled aircraft.
Packed inside are three grey and one clear sprues, along with a set of instructions and one small decal sheet.
With 85 parts, the build itself is not too challenging, the challenge will come with the camo scheme.
Detail-wise the kit isn’t too bad with numerous recessed panel lines and rivets adorning the fuselage and wings. The control surfaces have raised ribs and seem a little overdone but a quick swipe with some sandpaper should take care of that.
The cockpit is pretty busy looking with some raised details for the control and instrument panels. The seats are just blank bits of plastic, with the backs of the seats moulded onto the bulkheads. Scratching some harnesses should improve the look.
The whole cockpit is built as a tub so sidewall detail is in the form of bars for the rear gunner’s station and some instrument consoles for the pilot. There is a floor section for the rear station but strangely enough none for the pilot. Looking at the instructions it seems just to be an empty space below, once I start building this kit I will try and figure out if I can add a floor section.
The engines both have 2 sets of cylinders and detail is adequate for this scale.
The main undercarriage sits in the engine nacelles which have no internal detail, but there is a little raised detail in the form of spars for the undercarriage floors.
The undercarriage legs are not too bad, but no lines are moulded onto them. There is two sets of wheels to chose from, one with a mudguard and one without. The mudguard is moulded onto the wheel. Both sets of wheels the hubs are little more then raised disc’s. Both wheel sets have a very fine recessed pattern engraved in the form of lines for the tyres.
Armament for the kit consists of 3 × 12.7 mm forward-firing Breda-SAFAT machine guns, of which only the top two barrels are seen and supplied, and 1 × 7.7 mm rearward-firing Breda-SAFAT machine gun which sits in the gunner’s cockpit. The internal bomb bay is non existent and some surgery and scratch building will need to be done if you want to open the bomb bay doors.
The clear parts seem quite thick but are blemish free. The clear parts all have raised frames , but masking and painting the main canopy is not going to be easy, as the frames are numerous, resembling a greenhouse.

Instructions and markings

The instructions are the usual black line drawings and are printed on a A4 size sheets which are folded in half. The build sequence is easy to follow with interior colours given throughout the build.
The one downside of the instructions are that the camouflage painting guide is only in black and white, and bearing in mind that all the camo schemes for this aircraft are a 3 tone blotch/ spotty scheme makes deciphering which is which quite hard. MPM have the guides in colour on their website, but why they don’t just print them off and include them is quite strange in my opinion. Four views of the scheme are given.
All the camo schemes are the same with the upper surfaces sand/green and brown spots with the lower surfaces in blue. All the colours are given their correct Italian names, with F.S numbers and Gunze colour numbers.
The decals are printed by Aviprint and have very little carrier film around them. They look to be thin and are in register.
The only differences in each aircraft concerning the markings are the serial numbers and the badges found on the nose of the aircraft.
The aircraft that can be modelled are –
Breda BA.88B 'Lince' – 76 9, 5 Stormo, Caselle Torinese air base, June 1940.
Breda BA.88B 'Lince' – 86 8, 86 Squadriglia, Campiglia Marittima airfield, June 1940.
Breda BA.88B 'Lince' – 76 9, 76 Squadriglia, , Caselle Torinese air base, June 1940.

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