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TRUMPETER 1:72 WESTLAND WYVERN S.4 |
Reviewer:
Kevin Ronayne (kevin.ronayne@nuigalway.ie)
Kit Review submitted:
15 December 2005
Date: December 11th, 2005
The Wyvern originated in a November 1944 specification for a torpedo-armed fighter, to be equipped initially with the Rolls-Royce Eagle piston engine, but with the ability to take a turboprop engine. The first Wyvern flight did not take place until December 1946. This represented slow progress by the standards of the time, although the end of World War II may have reduced the impetus for speedy development. Only 15 Eagle-powered aircraft were built in total, and these soon developed a very bad reputation due to problems with the engine and the contra-prop arrangement. This left the turboprop route, with a choice of two engines: the Rolls-Royce Clyde, and the Armstrong Siddeley Python. The Clyde was clearly the better engine, with over 4,000 HP, and the capacity for further power increases as development progressed. However, Rolls-Royce was committed to building jet (i.e., turbojet) engines, so the Python had to be used. This developed less than 3,800 HP, and was also problematic in service.
Carrier trials of the Python-engined Wyvern began in 1950. Numerous minor development changes eventually led to the 'definitive' version, the TF.4 - later reclassified the S.4. 91 of this version were built, 4 being rebuilds of older aircraft. Minor changes continued to be made through the S.4 production run, including the incorporation of under wing dive brakes. The Wyvern finally entered service in 1953, replacing the Blackburn Firebrand. The Wyvern was withdrawn in 1958, but not before taking part in the Suez Canal campaign in late 1956.
In retrospect, the Wyvern can probably be seen as a flawed concept that was further hampered by the over reliance on new and untried technology. A multi-role fighter-bomber made sense, especially in the light of WW II experience - towards the end of the war, most British and US fighter squadrons spent most of their time in the ground attack role. However, given the pace of turbojet development, an aircraft such as the Wyvern was outclassed as a pure fighter. Interestingly, the US went down the same route with the Douglas Skyshark, but instead ended up using the Douglas Skyraider, which despite being 'old technology', proved itself one of the best ground attack aircraft ever built.
Up until recently, the only inject molded kit of the Wyvern in 1/72 scale was an ancient Frog offering. So after a gap of about 40 years, the kit industry finally decided that we could do with a new kit of the Wyvern. Roden was the first company to announce a new kit, followed by Trumpeter. However, Trumpeter released its kit first, and the Roden kit appears to have been consigned to history as a result. There is simply not enough room in today's market for two kits of a subject like this, and Roden very probably decided to cut its losses once the quality of the Trumpeter kit became apparent. This shows just how critically important it can be to be first to market in this industry.
This kit has also been released by a Japanese company called Monochrome, which is a new name to me. I suspect that the kit is a collaborative venture between Trumpeter and Monochrome, which might help to explain the relative speed with which the kit was produced. Trumpeter has collaborated with a number of different companies to date, which is probably part of a general strategy to build up a large product catalogue as quickly as possible. This can lead to a lack of consistency in product quality. However, in this case at least there would appear to be little to worry about.
The Monochrome boxing - which may be for the Japanese market - appears to nearly identical to the Trumpeter boxing, so I will only mention it when necessary. The Trumpeter kit comes in a large and very sturdy two-piece box, which is something of a Trumpeter trademark. The box cover proclaims that the kit has 5 sprues and 151 parts. This is mightily impressive, but it is actually well short of the mark! By design, the tooling includes two copies of the same sprue ('D'), with all the parts that are required in multiple. However, the totals on the box cover only count it once: the kit has 6 sprues and a truly staggering total of 191 parts! Are we complaining? Hell, no. The parts are molded mostly in standard-issue light grey, and feature excellent recessed panel detail. Everything is well packaged.
The instruction booklet is printed in landscape A4 format - again Trumpeter appears to prefer the landscape format for some reason. There is no background information on the booklet, nor is there a general painting/decal placement guide. The former is to be found on the side of the box, and the latter is included on a separate A4 sheet printed in glossy colour - I have included a thumbnail of this in the review. The in-place painting instructions included in the construction guide are extensive, but not quite comprehensive. The paint/decal guide is definitely lacking in this respect. I would have foregone the colour printing for an old-fashioned printout that noted the colour of every area and item. Paint codes are given for Gunze Sangyo only, as per Hasegawa kits.
Decals are included for a number of machines, including the 'Suez' aircraft illustrated on the box cover. The kit includes a range of external stores:
There are three subject options:
The Monochrome boxing includes the same 'Suez' subject, but the two other subjects are different - same squadrons, same date and location, same emblems, but different aircraft.
The kit also includes a number of optional configuration options such as folding wings, deployable Fowler flaps and RATO units. The list price of the kit (from Hannants) was STG £13, or about 20 Euro into my hands. On the face of it, this might seem a bit expensive, but you have to take into account not only the limited appeal of the subject matter, but also the deceptively huge size of the Wyvern. A limited run kit would cost at least as much (if not much more), and would probably be not quite up to the standard of a modern injection molded kit such as this.
I have seen comments to the effect that this kit is 'over-engineered', which might seem like a reasonable comment given that it has nearly 200 parts. To me, a kit is only over-engineered if the detailed breakdown of parts leads to difficulties or unnecessary complications during construction. That is certainly not the case with this kit - there were hardly any cases at all where less parts would have been better, which just confirms how detailed a kit this is.
Starting at the beginning, the cockpit is one of the best I have seen. It has 24 parts, including 9 for the seat. The only construction gripe I have relates to the main instrument panel. This is supplied as a transparent part with embossed detail, but there is also a film part with dial detail to be placed behind it. The transparency is sufficiently thick that you couldn't see the dial detail through it anyway, so I just left the film out. To my surprise, the cockpit and seat were painted (according to the instructions) in GS 317, which translates to Hu 140, which in turn points to FS 36231 Dark Gull Grey. This was a standard cockpit colour for US military aircraft at the time, whereas I would have expected the cockpits of British Aircraft to be painted black. I hope Trumpeter has done its research properly on this one, because I followed the instructions.
The completed cockpit is a 'bath' with huge tabs at the front and back. These slot into locating slots on the fuselage. So tight is the fit that there is absolutely no need for glue at this point. The two halves of the engine nacelle are 'keyed' so that the nacelle can only be attached the right way around. This is important because of subtle details in the panelling, although the instructions don't call attention to the keying. There is some confusion as to the nacelle colour of the 'Suez' aircraft, which was the subject I was building. According to the box cover artwork, it is Sky, but according to the paint guide, it should be Dark Grey. For reasons that are no longer clear to me, I decided to go with the cover artwork.
I have to mention that the wrong upper grey colour is given in the instructions. The colour given is GS 331 (described as Dark Sea Grey), which does indeed map to Hu 164 which is post-war RAF Dark Sea Grey. The problem is that this is wrong - the correct colour is Extra Dark Sea Grey, which is Hu 123 or GS 333. I hope no one gets caught out by this - I suspect many modellers might never even see the mistake and still use the correct colour anyway. The Monochrome boxing - which includes a 'conventional' paint/decal guide - specifies the correct colour. At this point, it is also worth mentioning that the instructions are silent on the finish of the aircraft surface. The conventional finish for this paint scheme is semi-gloss (aka satin). Hu 123 is Satin, but Hu 90 (Sky) is matt, so break out the varnish.
The contra-prop assembly is designed - I assume - so that both units can rotate independently of each other. However, I did not pay proper attention to the instructions at this point (the instructions are again somewhat vague), so I ended up fixing the rear unit in place. In order to get the forward unit to rotate freely, I omitted part A14 - you can't see it anyway once the front spinner is attached. The front and rear blades are angled in opposite directions, which is correct for a contra-prop configuration. The spinner colour is another area where the instructions are silent. After much checking of references - which was in vain - I rummaged through my paint stocks and decided that Hu 153 Insignia Red was the only possible colour that I could use. I suspect it probably is the correct colour, but I would have been happier if the instructions had said just said so. This colour was also used on the tail plane finlets.
The natural angle of attachment for tail planes is too low, and I had to increase the angle quite substantially. The rudder is included with each fuselage half meaning that the assembled rudder is too thick at the trailing edge. A glitch in the instructions means that the canopy frame just behind the seat (part B22) is shown in place even in step 7, even though it should not be attached until step 21, where the canopy is added. This mistake is important if you want to have the canopy in the open position, as the frame would have to be attached to the canopy first, and only then to the back of the guide rail at the rear of the cockpit.
I messed up one of the rear fuselage 'porthole' windows, and used Humbrol ClearFix. Actually, the result looked so good that I considered doing the same on the other side. According to the Humbrol instructions, ClearFix can be applied with either a paintbrush or a cocktail stick, but a cocktail stick is by far the better option. The big exhaust pipes are not fully open, which could have been easily resolved by molding each pipe in two halves.
There are a lot of points to mention about the wing assembly. With folding wings, folding tips and two sets of flaps, there are a lot of parts, and there would have been even more if the under wing dive brakes were also molded separately, instead of being molded in place. My understanding is that the dive brakes were introduced during the production run, so it is possible that not all aircraft were fitted with them - I hope their inclusion is correct for all of the subject aircraft.
Some of the wing parts had to be cleaned up around the edges where they attached to each other. Also, some sprue attachment points were quite thick, which made it difficult to remove some parts without damaging them. I had some nasty marks to clean up along the wing leading edges.
There are two sets of hinges included for attaching the outer wings to the main central wing, depending on whether or not you want to depict an aircraft with folded wings. My subject was to have deployed wings, but I found it very difficult to attach the hinge parts, so I just left them off. The fit of the main wing section to the outer wing panel assemblies was extremely good, and I had no real problems getting the outer wing panels to set at the correct angle. The kink in the Wyvern wing is just inboard of the fold joint - if the joint was right on the kink, it might have been a structural weakness. The wing tip panels are too thick, and I had to sand them down somewhat, losing some of the panel detail in the process. For anyone considering an aircraft with folding wings, I should point out that the wing tips were not always folded in practice.
The main flaps are detached from the wing proper in a semi-deployed configuration. I don't know how easy it would be to depict them in the closed position. The fully lowered position (see the photograph below) might be easier to achieve with some minor surgery. The 'Fowler' flap units can be attached in either the open or closed position, and this is one area where you should take some care in attaching the right parts to each other the right way around - study the construction guide closely!
This picture of a Wyvern about to land on a carrier deck was scanned from an old journal called War Machine. It was one of the very few photographs of the Wyvern that I could find, and I could just had to include it because of the details that are visible.
The pylon/rocket launch rail configuration is interesting. It suggests that the Wyvern flew with unused pylons and/or launch rails. Since this aircraft does not have the 'Suez' stripes, it's probable that this practice was commonplace, and not just a combat expedient.
You can easily build an aircraft with retracted undercarriage, even though the instructions do not mention it - all you will have to do is to remove a few locating tabs on some of the doors. Even with a 'wheels down' kit, some alterations need to be made to the main wheel cover doors. This is because they should be attached in the closed position, as I have just alluded to. The diagonal struts are a tight fit with the doors closed, but they do fit. In general terms, the whole undercarriage area is of the highest quality - the main wheel bay detail is excellent, and the main struts slot into position without any 'give' whatsoever. The tires have excellent tread detail, and even have the 'Dunlop' name embossed on them. In light of this, I wonder why the aircraft is referred to as the 'British Wyvern', and not the 'Westland Wyvern'?
© Kevin Ronayne 2005
Due to poor lighting conditions, the shade of red in this photograph is too light, as a result of the flash. Some of the other photographs give a much better idea of the correct hue.
A final note on the undercarriage is that the bays were painted natural metal (i.e., dull aluminium) as per the instructions. I have seen photos of another completed kit where the bays were painted Sky. My general impression is that there was a move away from Sky (or white, or whatever the underside colour was) to unpainted wheel bays around this time on Royal Navy carrier aircraft.
Each RATO unit has 7 parts, and I fitted these since I was building an aircraft with as much features showing as possible, bar the folding wings. The RATO unit attachment holes have to be drilled out before the wings are assembled, as do the centreline pylon holes - the bomb and torpedo pylons are different. However, the rocket pylon and wing bomb/tank pylon holes are already open. This makes some sense in the context of the photograph that I talked about earlier, except that there is no provision in the kit for 'empty' rocket launch rails. The instructions suggest three possible configurations, one of which is the torpedo plus all 16 rockets, which I have my doubts about. My configuration was one not mentioned in the instructions: a centreline bomb, wing tanks and 8 rockets on the outer positions. The box artwork suggests such a configuration, and - even if the centreline bomb pylon was left empty - contradicts the instructions.
© Kevin Ronayne 2005
The tank-to-wing fit was OK but not great, and required some filler - a rare occurrence in the building of this kit. Because the tank pylon-to-wing 'footprint' is much bigger than that of the bomb pylon, I could ignore the issue of the empty inner rocket pylons, although I still had to fill in some holes. All of the rocket fins were marred by mold misalignment, which was easily corrected. As you might suspect, I did not fit the rocket units until after I had painted the 'Suez' stripes.
The main paint scheme was easy to apply, even if I did apply it completely by hand. I dislike using masking tape over surfaces that curve on more than one plane - find that it is easier in the long run to use visual references and a steady hand. The 'Suez' stripes were applied using some masking tape, and some manual work. I do have a query about the inboard demarcation point for these stripes. According to the box artwork, the stripes start at the 'kink' in the wing, which means that they encroach on to the main flaps - you can see this clearly even in the thumbnail at the top of this review. According to the paint guide, the stripes start at the wing fold junction, which is slightly outboard of the kink. This is the option that I took.
The decal quality is general very good - the decals are thin, very glossy and in excellent register. Some of the smaller decals are not indicated for use with all versions, or with any versions - for example, some under wing trestle stencils and propeller blade markings. I may yet apply these retrospectively, if and when I can work out their exact positions. The under wing WP337 serials on the 'Suez' aircraft need to be cut up to give you the small portions that would not have been obscured by the stripes. Incidentally, the Monochrome boxing that includes a full set of stripe decals, although the contents diagram appears to show the Trumpeter decal sheet! The Monochrome sheet also includes a decal for a black anti-glare panel ahead of the windscreen. This latter item is not mentioned or shown at all in the Trumpeter instructions, and I am not sure if I need to paint it on.
© Kevin Ronayne 2005
I freely admit to being a novice on Wyvern accuracy - just because I like the aircraft doesn't mean I know that much about it, or have any references worth talking about. It is, after all, a very rare aircraft. The box quotes basic dimensions of 13.41 m (span) and 12.8 m (length). My journal reference agrees on the span, but gives a length of 12.88 m, as do other references. The kit appears to be very close to the quoted figures. More importantly perhaps, I do not see any notable discrepancies in terms of detail or shape, although that is based on a rather limited set of photographs. The one thing I did notice is that at least some Wyvern S.4's did not have the fuselage porthole windows, or they might have been faired over.
This must be a very strong candidate for 'kit of the year' for 2005, certainly in 1/72 scale aircraft. Even the new Revell Hunter would be hard-pushed to beat it, and I know because I am completing that kit as I type up this review. It would be churlish to focus on the very minor problems with this kit - the overall impression is that this is a 'Wonder Kit'. For a subject such as the Wyvern, to get an injection-molded kit of this quality at this price probably represents the best of all worlds.
© Kevin Ronayne 2005
As I have already said, Wyvern references are not exactly my strong point. A number of references pages are available on the Web - just type 'Westland Wyvern' into Google or some other search engine, and you will get similar results to what I did. Not surprisingly, there are relatively few resources on the Web, and most of those probably take their information from one or two common printed sources. The best page, written by the redoubtable Joe Baugher, can be found here.
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