1:72 Fairey Barracuda (wet decals)

An angular bomber with a high tailplane

The Fairey Barracuda is often called the ugliest machine of its class and there is something in that: the high-set tailplane on struts, the long glazed canopy and the angular wing with large flaps look as if they had been assembled from random parts. Even so it was the first all-metal monoplane the Fleet Air Arm received in place of biplane torpedo machines, and later versions added radar equipment for finding targets out over the open sea.

The eight subjects lead the modeler into regions that are not common in model sets. Most of the machines served with squadrons in southern India and in Ceylon in 1944 and 1945, others belonged to the Venerable and the Vengeance operating with the British Pacific force, and two aircraft come from the postwar period, including one from a visit to Oslo in 1948 in an overall dark blue finish.

Consider before the build:

• the late version carries antennas that the early variant does not have
• aircraft from the tropics are usually heavily faded and worn on the leading edges
• the markings are divided letter by letter and number by number, so the position can be adjusted

The set holds printed markings only. The kit has to be obtained separately and chosen to match the version selected, because the differences between the individual forms are obvious at first glance.

For a collector of British carrier equipment this is one of the few ways to get a specific combination of letters and numbers documented to a specific day and ship onto a model, even for machines that usually do not make it into the ordinary aviation books.