Airfix 1/72 Vickers Wellington BIII

AIRFIX 1:72 VICKERS WELLINGTON B.III

Reviewer: Carlos Giani (carlos_giani2002@yahoo.de)
Kit Review submitted: 4 October 2009

Kit Details:

Airfix 1/72^nd scale Vickers Wellington B.III (Kit N° 04001). Produced in France.

Aircraft History:

The Wellington, affectionately known as the “Wimpey”, was the standard Royal Air Force night bomber from 1939 until late in the war, and was built in larger numbers than any other British bomber, with 11450 being produced. Designed in 1933, the Wellington had a performance and capacity which was unsurpassed until the four-engined heavy bombers began operations in 1942.Wellingtons of the Bomber Command went into action the day after the outbreak of war, taking part in the raid on the German Fleet in the Kiel Canal, later they took part in the first thousand bomber raids. In addition, Wellingtons were used in large numbers in the Mediteranean theatre, In India and at home for mine laying and Coastal Command duties.

A notable feature of the Wellington was its geodetic construction, a system of metal strips taking the form of trellis work, which allowed the Wimpey to withstand a high amount of punishment and still keep in the air. The Wellington B.III was powered by two 1380HP Bristol Hercules 11 engines, giving a maximum speed of 420 Km/h and a range of 4000 Km. Maximum bomb load was 1800 Kg and defensive armament consisted of eight machine guns, two in the nose turret, four in the tail, and two hand-operated amidships.

The Kit:

This kit is a re-edition of an Airfix classic, coming from their golden 60´s/70´s and, unfortunately it shows that the molds are really worn out: many surface unevenness and small burrs, wing halves are slightly bended, fuselage halves which do not encounter well with each other (very noticeable around the bomb bay area), movable ailerons which leave big gaps, etc. A few dry fit tests confirm that half a tube putty will be needed. Inside the usual oversized sturdy box you get a plastic bag containing some trees with about 62 black (ughhh!) styrene parts, one sprue with 7 transparencies and a small decals sheet with basics. The fabric surface is just represented by raised lines, much of which will disappear after filling/sanding. Lots of flash and mold seam lines. The clear parts are thick and barely usable (I quickly found out that the parts from Falcon set N° 8, though for the Machbox Mk X, cannot be used here).

Instructions:

You get one A3 sheet folded to an A4 leaflet plus one extra A4 sheet. Page one of the leaflet brings multilingual history/data, top of page two presents the usual warnings and symbols explanation. Construction begins with 3 steps at the bottom of page two (the turrets and the “cockpit”), and continues with steps 4 and 5 on page three…which show a nearly completed plane and explains the montage of landing gear, well doors and some bits (?). Page four, with construction steps 6 and 7 explain the montage of the stabilizers, the fin and the complete engines/nacelles (again, fuselage and wings are ready glued). The first side of the extra A4 sheet shows the assembling of the fuselage halves and the wings…A bit confusing for a beginner! The rear side of the extra sheet shows a four-view painting/decaling diagram for one version. Paints are listed for the Humbrol range; absolute minimal detail painting instructions.

Construction:

For the cockpit all you get is a floor, two “seats”, a (unusable and blurry) control column and a flat instrument panel (without decal). Although I sure am not a die-harder, this was much too little for me, so I added rear blanking, some framing made of styrene strip, pedals, belts and a new control column. I dry-brushed some dials and painted the office with Humbrol H78 interior green. The triangular side windows, which are thick and have the geodesic framing raised, were glued from the inside, being too small for their cavities and leaving big gaps (I joined them to the two diagonal fuselage lines and left the gap on the top, if this makes sense). Further, the two turrets are supposed to be movable, so that they must be treated as subassemblies and later be trapped between the fuselage halves. Knowing how much sanding work there would be to do on the fuselage, and due to the risk of therefore ruining the turrets, I left them apart and sanded their bottom down, so that they could later be butt-joined in their place. I glued the fuselage together and left it apart to dry, followed by many sessions of filling and sanding..

Each wing consists of an upper and lower half, with the movable aleiron trapped in between. I fixed the latter and filled/ sanded/ rescribed the control surfaces. The nacelles consist of an upper and lower half, and they were a very bad fit, requiring lots of putty to conform to the wings. Fortunately, the landing gear legs can be glued afterwards (a fact which is not self-evident on older models of bombers). The one-piece cowlings have an inner blanking with just half-cylinders molded on (no real crankcase!). Since I had no usable spares, I tried to represent the outer circumference of the crankcase with paint (ughh!). The wings fit into cavities on the fuselage sides, fortunately leaving only minor gaps.

Each stabilizer consists of two halves and an extra horizontal rudder - the same applies to the vertical fin. In all cases I cut off the locating pins and butt-joined the rudders to reduce gaps. The joins of the stabilizers and fin to the fuselage also required lots of putty. Next, the canopy and the bomber´s lower window were glued on - the fit was so-so and they have too heavy framing. The last step before painting was the addition of some air scoops and antenae.

After masking was properly done, I started applying a coat of coal black to the lower surfaces and fuselage sides including the whole fin, using Humbrol H85. More masking and a coat of Revell R381 satin earth was applied, followed by disrupted Revell R361 satin upper green for the camouflage. All paints were shiny enough to apply the decals directly. Everything was sealed with Humbrol H135 satin clear.

The location holes for the landing gear are on the inner sides of the nacelles (to permit the landing gear to be retracted, another „olden days gimmick“), but exactly here the molds are really worn out, so that the fix of the legs is really weak. I decided to reinforce them with some bits of plastic glued under the „X-beams“ of the legs (hope you know what I mean); fortunately they are not really visible from the outside. I also added retraction arms made of steel wire. Finally I added the propellers, turrets, midship guns and the exhausts, the later being different for each side: one „plain“ and one of the „fire catching“ type (there are only this two in the kit, not four for 2 versions); don´t know if this is right.

Versions:

Just one, 425^th Squadron based at RAF-Dishforth, earth/green over black.

Decals:

A small sheet with roundels, fin flashes and code numbers. They performed very good onto the raised lines, but the code numbers silvered a bit.

Accuracy:

Well, after many hours and lots of filling/sanding I´ve got just an acceptable representation of the Wimpey. Recommended strictly only to the Airfix collector. Nowadays there is a really big choice of state-of-art Wellingtons out there: MPM´s Mk IC, II, III, IV, VIII and X (the last marketed by Italeri) and Trumpeter´s Mk IC, III, X and XIV. Even the older Matchbox X is still usable and has, in the opinion of some modelers, the best representation of the fabric surface (they say the MPM/Trumpeter offerings are overdone). A real atraction is MPM´s Mk II with its Merlin engines.

Conclusions:

References:

World Encyclopedia of Aviation, band 8

An open letter from Carlos to Hornby, owners of Airfix:

Dear Mr. Airfix:

As a modeller who started building kits in the late 60´s, I remember what great fun it was to build your kits as a youngster. On those days and for nearly two decades, your good quality and fantastic range made you to the greatest name in the Plastic Modeling World (one could nearly explode being full of joy building a Stirling, or a B-29!). But, times go by and things change…I am quite sure that there are lots of modelers out there who, like myself, kept loyal to you. But it becomes harder and harder to have faith while looking at yourself ruining your reputation with some very bad kits, e.g. these Wellington and the B-17G I review here at SMAKR some months ago. Please, do yourself a favor and throw such molds away! To rebox a PM´s (!) kit also won´t make things better….

But there is hope at last! I was very, very pleased reading Phil Chapman´s review to your brand new Spitifre Mk.XIX. Finally a new, state-of-art product from our beloved Airfix! We can only hope that this means the start of a new policy and a new Airfix-era. You don´t have to search for exotic subjects (leave that to the Czech specialists), but you could bring out many, many “new-tooled”, state-of-art kits from your traditional range, since you had many products which are still the “only game in town” (for instance: I´m sure a brand new Fairey Rotodyne would we sold out before it reaches the shops!).

But you have to be fast, since Revell Germany and Trumpeter are not sleeping…You are back in England, and you could revive the old English Quality Tradition. Come on, Mr. Airfix, please don´t disappoint us, wake up and take the challenge!

Thanks for your kind attention.
Carlos Giani

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