I feel that I should start this post by stating that I’m in no way an airfix enthusiast, a military enthusiast, or even an aircraft enthusiast come to think of it … there, that’s that settled!
It was while browsing through one of those gawd-awful large ‘hobby’ shops that I picked this up, more on a whim than anything else, and ended up devoting more hours than I care to admit to assembling, painting and finally affixing the transfers to this 1:72 scale model of the Hawker Sea Fury FB.11.
It actually pains me to admit that I actually rather enjoyed the whole process, although it was a tad frustrating at times. Especially the transfers, many of which were so tiny that it was a real chore to get them correctly placed. This model was an Airfix one and I was relatively impressed with the quality of the moulded pieces and the generally good fit when it came to putting them together.
I have to admit that I actually enjoyed making this one so much that I spent some time looking for another model to while away a few hours and ended up buying one from Revell – a Sopwith F-1 camel – although I can’t say I’ll be buying any more Revell models, the quality being fairly substandard in comparison to the Airfix one.
What I particularly liked about this model was the wee bit of background information that came with it, so not even so much the model itself then, it read:
The Sea Fury was the last of the piston engine powered fighters to see service with the Royal Navy. The aircraft represented the limit to which the propeller driven fighter could be developed and at this stage the jet fighter took over. The F.B. Mk11 was powered by an eighteen cylinder Bristol Centaurus engine, driving a five-bladed propeller.
The Sea Fury saw active service with the Fleet Air Arm in the Korean War aboard the British Eastern Fleet carriers. They served with distinction when on the 9th August 1952, a flight of four 802 aircraft were intercepted by eight MiGs. Lead by Lt P Carmichael in the dog fight that ensued one MiG was seen to crash and two others were badly damaged without any loss to the Sea Furies. This was perhaps the Royal Navy’s most significant incident involving the shooting down of a jet fighter by a piston engine powered aircraft.
Now, I have no knowledge of such things, but that last bit sounds pretty damned impressive to me!
Will I be doing more Airfix models? Perhaps, it was far more engaging than I had imagined and provided a good bit of focus on something at least marginally crafty when focus on anything crafty at all has been somewhat lacking of late.
I made several WWII fighter models many years ago. I also am not particularly interested in military aircraft, but building and painting the models was a lot of fun. Your post brought back memories. :-)