1:144 Handley Page Victor

A crescent wing over the Persian Gulf

The Handley Page Victor came about as a nuclear bomber with an unmistakable crescent-shaped wing, but it played out its best-known chapter only in the role of a flying filling station. In 1990 No. 55 Squadron flew from its home at Marham to Muharraq in Bahrain, and its machines then kept literally the whole strike force in the air, because without refueling none of the aircraft would have reached the targets.

That was also when a custom returned that the Royal Air Force had not known since the Second World War: female figures and names began to be painted on the nose. This sheet gives three of them. Machine XH671 carries a pair of names, Sweet and Slinky, and forty-one marked missions, XH672 appears as Maid Marian with a tally of fifty-two missions, and XL231 with the name Lusty Linda has sixteen marks on the nose. It is exactly this last airframe that has survived and can be seen today in a British aviation museum.

For the modeler this guise of the aircraft is rewarding in terms of color as well. The tanker machines had a matte gray finish with no sheen, and the only striking place on the whole airframe was precisely the nose, so all the attention is concentrated on a few square centimeters. All the more reason for the artwork to be printed sharply and without shifted colors.

What matters about the markings

Besides the artwork itself, the sheet also carries rows of tiny marks that counted the missions flown. They are the smallest elements of the whole sheet and they decide the impression, so it is advisable to apply them in groups and keep checking the spacing against a photograph.

The sheet suits kits of the tanker version at this reduction. Plastic parts and paints are not enclosed with it.