Italeri 1/72 Bell AH-1W Super Cobra

ITALERI 1:72 BELL AH-1W SUPER COBRA

Reviewer: Mark B (SMAKR Webmaster) (smakr1@optusnet.com.au)
Kit Built + Review Submitted: September 2009

Kit Details:

Italeri 1:72 Scale No. 160 - AH-1W Super Cobra

Aircraft History:

The Bell AH-1 Huey Cobra started life as perhaps the first truly dedicated helicopter gunship as we now know them to be, and performed admirably in the Vietnam War although suffered heavy losses. It was a single engined chopper with a nose cannon and sensor and a two man crew in a glass canopy which could also deploy rockets and TOW missiles from short stub wings either side of the fuselage. Over its life, the AH-1 Huey Cobra was upgraded through a range of different variants for different roles, particularly in the USMC service.

The AH-1W Super Cobra was effectively an off spawn of the demonstrator Bell Model 309 King Cobra project which introduced a variety of different upgrades to the AH-1 airframe, most notably an extended tail boom, twin engines and nose turret mounted cannon. The Bell 309 was developed after the cancellation of the Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne project, itself a casualty of a competition against the winner, the famous Hughes AH-64 Apache. The Kingcobra first flew in 1971 and introduced a variety of avionic upgrades too, including the pilot having his own LLTV system allowing him to fly in total darkness. In the end the Kingcobra was really only a demonstrator, with only two built, one being for the US Marines. Although the chopper was not produced, the technology and other upgrades found its way into other AH-1 and UH-1 programmes. The Hughes AH-64 Apache went on to become one of the world's best gunship field helicopters.

In 1981, Congress refused to grant any funds for the Marines to procure the AH-64 Apache. Instead, they gave Bell an injection of funds to provide the AH-1T Improved SeaCobra, itself also a spin off of the Model 309, for the Marines to use. Long story cut short, Bell decided to use the money to upgrade the AH-1T which included the relocation of the TOW electronics and other avionics equipment from the tailboom into bulged cheek fairings, plus an upgraded nose FLIR sensor pod.

The first production aircraft was redesignated AH-1W and given the codename of Supercobra. Almost 200 AH-1W's were provided to the USMC, some of which were converted from AH-1T, and it has proven itself as a more than capable small battlefield helicopter. Turkey also placed an order to licence build the AH-1W, along with Romania and Taiwan.

The Kit:

Two sprues of 54 light grey parts float loosely in the box, along with the small decal sheet and two clear parts on a separate sprue. The clear parts had very small weblike scratches on it and again find myself disappointed with Italeri's packaging routine. The parts have nicely rendered raised surface detail and are crisply molded without any flash other than the most minor of flash that needs just a quick scrape of the hobby knife to remove.

Instructions:

Folded out strip with brief history, sprue diagram, colour callouts from the Model Master range (some FS numbers provided) and five simple assembly steps with low resolution b&w photos showing close ups of model, gun and cockpit. To get a painting/markings diagram you need to look at the bottom of the box, which provides colour chips as the instructions do not provide guidance on painting and decalling.

Construction:

The cockpit gets a reasonable fit out with two seats, two instrument panels (both with raised console detail), a HUD like clear piece and column stick for the rear seater and vision scope for the pilot. Everything fits very well, although be careful you place the correct seats into their respective positions (aside from obviously the part numbers, the alignment grooves underneath the seat will assist in achieving this) and cockpit gets a dark grey wash mixed with black (the idea is to provide some depth and shadows rather than an all out black cockpit!).

Before the fuselage halves go together some weight must be added into the nose to prevent tailsitting. A small ball bearing from my fishing tackle box did the trick. The nose gun is also assembled and not cemented to the housing that is affixed to the fuselage, in order for it to be moveable. The final step before placing the fuselage halves together is to trap the one-piece tailplane. The halves then go together quite well without any gaps.

The engine nacelle sub assembly is tackled next, and similar to the nose gun, the main rotor shaft is not glued to the housing that is affixed to the nacelle to enable the rotor to spin freely. In spite of my best efforts I ended up getting glue on the rotor shaft so mine has a fixed rotor. Before affixing it in the nacelle, I simply rotated it to the angle I wanted the main rotor propeller to be positioned. This sub assembly is a tight fit into the upper fuselage cavity but with a bit of care fits superbly.

Construction moves quite quickly now with the intake and engine exhausts added, one-piece canopy, FLIR nose sensor and cheek fairings are also affixed and all fit quite nicely. Just make sure you get the exhaust housings on the correct side and that the FLIR nose sensor halves are affixed together AFTER putting them on the nose. The nose has two small alignment pins to be trapped within the halves of the FLIR sensor which will obviously cause lots of problems if you sub assemble the sensor ball before putting it on the nose.

The landing skids are perfect fits, just needs a little care to ensure the alignment is straight so the chopper sits flat on the ground. The small stub wings need a little bit of care to put on correctly. They have a small hole indicating where a pylon may be affixed, but don't be fooled, this is on TOP of the wing, not underneath as you would think and it is easy to get this wrong if you take both stub wings off the sprue. A small overwing sensor of some description goes here and the Hellfire missiles and rocket pod are assembled on pylons which are butt joined under the wing. Again all fits very well.

Colour Schemes:

Only one version is catered for by this kit, a USMC Super Cobra from an unidentified regiment, in wrap around Light Ghost Grey, Dark Green and Black camouflage. This is catered for on the bottom of the box, since the instructions do not cover painting/decalling. Obviously you need to plan ahead a little, by making sure where you paint black, is not going to be an area that one of the black decals is supposed to be applied against, so care is needed in this regard. I followed Italeri's advice of what colours to use which translated into Humbrol H127 Light Ghost Grey, which was applied first (and in a way used as a primer); H116 US Dark Green and H33 Black as the wraparound camouflage. I was initially a bit concerned about H116, I felt that might be too dark, and I am still not convinced it is 100% right, but once everything was given a gloss cote, gee it looked pretty cool!

Decals:

A tiny sheet containing just 13 decals (obviously all but one of which are part of a pair, such as the US Insignia, so you could say only 6 different decals!), all in dark grey/black register, which of course means they need to be applied against non-black areas of the aircraft as noted above. The decals are thin, matt and fairly sharp register, printed by Zanchetti. The box will show you where to place the obvious decals such as the roundel and MARINES logo but you will need to look back through the steps in the instructions to find out where to place the other decals. The last two steps in the assembly phase point out where to place the decals by their number.

My decals were obviously quite old, so there was a lot of gummy gunk that lifted from the backing paper along with the decal and had to be carefully removed. The decals are very thin, mine had deteriorated somewhat so were very easy to rip but I managed to keep them all intact or able to rejoin them seamlessly. In spite of a gloss cote to seal them in they did silver, probably due to being old, and there were tiny flecks of gunk still there, but to the non-trained eye, they looked quite acceptable.

Overall Recommendation:

Really enjoyed doing this kit, helicopters traditionally are not kits for beginners because of often some intricate parts but you probably wouldn't need to many kits under your belt if you wanted to tackle this one. Just be careful you don't mix parts up as many are supposed to only go on starboard or port side and are not interchangeable. The end result looks like a highly convincing replica and now that the chopper is well and truly in service other schemes could also be considered. Highly recommended!

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