1:48 Hawker Hurricane IIB

Twelve barrels in the wing

The form with the letter B doubled the number of machine guns to a dozen and received racks for two hundred-pound bombs. Out of it came what the squadrons called the bombing Hurricane: the machine set out low over the sea, dropped its load on harbor installations and returned the same way. The weight of the additional armament took away some of the agility for which the type had been valued in 1940, but for attacks on ground targets that was an acceptable price.

Beyond the Arctic Circle

In the autumn of 1941 British wings with these machines arrived at Vaenga airfield near Murmansk to help defend the port and at the same time to train Soviet pilots. It was one of the few episodes in which the Royal Air Force fought directly from Soviet soil. Deliveries then continued by convoy across the Arctic Ocean and the type went on serving on the Eastern Front, often with its armament converted to local calibers. Further hundreds of machines went to North Africa and to the defense of the Far East.

The scope of the set

The box covers the outer surfaces of the glazing and complements them with two stencils for the insignia. Anyone building a machine with weathered camouflage will appreciate that a sprayed roundel can be darkened or lightened just like its surroundings, without a film showing through beneath it. On a machine freshly taken over from the factory, by contrast, the edge stays exactly as crisp as it came out of the stencil.

The cut is made for the shape of one particular clear part, so try it against the model you intend to build beforehand. Neither plastic parts nor bottles of paint are in the bag.