Introduction

The Seal Teams (Sea, Air, Land) of the US Navy are a well-known elite unit for maritime special operations so additional info might be obsolete.
The origin of the SEALs can be found in World War II where Scout swimmers and UDTs (Underwater Demolition Teams) prepared amphibious landing operations mainly on the Pacific front. In the early sixties the first SEAL-teams were formed and experienced their baptism of fire in the Vietnam conflict and eanred the title “Men with Green Faces.”
Today there are 6 SEAL-Teams in service each with a certain area of operation. SEAL Team 3 is/was stationed in Coronado, California with Northern Africa and the Middle East as operational area.

Content

This is one of Dragon’s older kits dated from the “World’s Elite Force” series, which was originally published in 1996. As it doesn’t appear in Dragon’s current product catalogue but my local model kit dealer just received it, so it may be a re-issue item. The set includes four figures of typical Dragon-quality that are still very good for their age but not comparable to the new Generation-2-figures from DML.

You get two figures in diving suit and two figure in standard BDU that can be used from the nineties until now.

The two SEALs in diving suits wear their diving mask and are equipped with a Draeger Mk V rebreather. The flippers are attached to the belt, which also features weights. Ammo pouches, a pistol holster and the combat knife there round out the equipment list. The kneeling diver has a Heckler & Koch MP5 SD3 silenced submachine-gun and the standing figure holds a M4 A1 carbine. A navigation board is also part of the kit. As the diving mask is already part of the head, it will be very difficult to paint the eyes because they are hard to reach (refer to the detail picture). Maybe an extra part of clear styrene would have been wiser.

The two SEALs in standard combat suit are both in standing position, one armed with a M60 E3 machine gun, that can be equipped with a bipod, the other armed with a M4/M203 carbine. Besides ammo pouches there are water canteens, combat knives and various bags as personal equipment. One wears a boonie hat, the other a bonnet.

The parts

The plastic parts on the two sprues are well moulded with crisp details in the typical Dragon-style grey styrene. There almost no flash on the parts. Unfortunately the weapon handle is moulded within the weapon hand of each figure as is standard with Dragon figure kits of the mid-nineties. So you have to either drill the hand or cut the weapon handle of the four beautiful moulded weapons and try to fit the “rest” of the weapon to the hand. You have to invest extra work at this point.
The instructions are in typical Dragon-style with illustrations by Ronald Volstad and refer to Gunze Sangyo or Model Master paints, but you may want to check your references for more accurate colours.

Conclusion

Although an older kit that does not match the current Dragon standard and the issue with the weapon handles, I still recommend this one. I really like the choice of subject and my favourite two figures are the ones in diving suit. To my knowledge they are the only modern frogmen in plastic I know of and compared to the product range of WW2 figures the product range on modern figures is rather small.
If you are interested in modern subject of Special Operations Forces the kit won’t be wasted money.