With Bell’s usual left-field approach to aircraft design, the team produced the world’s first tricycle landing geared prop-driven aircraft, as well as the first aircraft to site the engine behind the pilot, while the airscrew remained at the front.

The P-39 was the result of Bell’s response to a specification for a fighter from the USAAC, which was to be a high-altitude interceptor. In addition, there is a sheet of instructions for the new 3D printed parts that are applicable to both aircraft, again printed in spot colour. It arrives in an end-opening box with a lower tray inside that pulls straight out, revealing separately bagged kits totalling four sprues in grey styrene, two sprues of clear parts, a bag of 3D printed parts, a bag of three ball-bearings, two sheets of pre-cut kabuki-style masking material (not pictured), a decal sheet, and a glossy A5 instruction booklet that covers the building of both models with colour profiles at the end of each build process. This is a combined boxed set containing two kits plus new decal options, and some new 3D printed parts. At this stage of the war, the US forces were using a lot of Wildcats and Airacobras, as the more advanced designs had not yet reached scale production. The name came from the Allied code for the island, and they were later subsumed by the Solomon Islands Air Command. The Cactus Air Force was the name given to the Allied air power that was stationed in the area around Guadalcanal during the latter part of 1942 at the beginning of the Allied campaign there, predominantly stationed at Henderson field.

3d slotted cactus set