VJ Day tribute

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I had intended to post this on VJ Day as a little tribute to 'The Forgotten War', but '403-Forbidden' prevented me from doing so! Anyway, I had decided that I'd have a bit of a break from BoB and European theatre modelling, and so I managed to get hold of the 1/72 Hawker Hurricane/Sea Hurricane MkIIc kit (A02096) which was going to be built as the SEAC aircraft. I also built a P-47 Thunderbolt - unfortunately not from an Airfix kit (because I couldn't find even a second-hand one...), but I felt the Hurricane needed the company, although as far as this post is concerned, I'll focus principally (in every sense) on the Hurricane build.

The Hurricane is a relatively old mould, and so the cockpit side-walls were devoid of any detail (though surprisingly, the wheel wells had some), so the first stage of the build was to scratch a bit of cockpit detail and also produce a suitably attired pilot for the aircraft:

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Thereafter, the build was more or less OOB (including the decals which were for an aircraft of 34 Squadron, SEAC based at Imphal between 1943 and 1944) except I did scratch-build a reflector gun-sight as well:

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I enjoyed the build (including the scratch-built bits) although I have to admit that the P-47 was a much more modern moulding (why isn't there an up-to-date P-47 in the Airfix range?) and thus the Thunderbolt was built as belonging to 134 Squadron based in Burma in 1945, using after-market decals.

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And here is a final picture of the two together:

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Hope you like what you can see - and as mentioned earlier, it was good to build a little tribute to SEAC to commemorate VJ Day.

 

 

 

[Peter s]

Nice! I did exactly the same pairing too BTW. I know there's accuracy issues with the Hurricane but especially the version that comes with the "flames of victory" club set (with MG and Cannon wing options) lets you build SO many variants that I really like it.

[peebeep]

The Hurricane is a relatively old mould, and so the cockpit side-walls were devoid of any detail (though surprisingly, the wheel wells had some)

 

New tool in 2010, hardly out of the ark (as opposed to 02042, released in 1972). I think the issue with this kit is that it was released when Airfix where hastily rebuilding the old catalogue, so it doesn't have the sort of accuracy and detail that is displayed in more recent kits. If you have a look at the Corgi diecast Hurricane it looks very similar to the Airfix plastic. Hmmm.

[Peter s]

Thats interesting... its like a new tool but just not quite as good. As I said minor issues apart its one of my favourite kits. I must have done 3-sea hurricane variants (Cannon and MG), a Hurri-bomber, a night fighter version with wing tanks and even one with 4 60lb rockets... also a Russian one I covered in snow.