Eastern Express (Toko) 1/72 Sopwith Snipe

EASTERN EXPRESS (TOKO) 1:72 SOPWITH SNIPE

Reviewer: Tim Beales (rec.models.scale)
Kit Review submitted: 7 December 2002

The Aircraft:

The Sopwith Snipe 7F.1 was developed as a successor to the Sopwith Camel, and at first glance, it bears a noticeable structural resemblance. Coming on line right at the end of WW1, fewer than 100 Snipes took part in the war, but those that did gave a good account of themselves. The Snipe played a major role in the RAF after WW1, serving all over the British Empire in the lean years spanning the 1920s. Over 2,000 was eventually built, and the type retired in 1927.

Kit Parts:

The kit is a reboxing of the Toko kit, even to the point of having Toko tags on the sprues alongside the Eastern Express tags. There are 37 parts moulded in a quite hard grey plastic with virtually no flash, which is good, as some of the smaller parts are really tiny.

The instruction sheet is a folded A5-ish size sheet. The top half of the first sheet has a B&W replica of the box art, and a history in Russian, followed by what I presume to be a translation of the Russian text in broken and poorly written English. The two inside sheets show the assembly steps in six sections.

Construction of the Kit:

The first stage is the easy assembly of the Bentley engine and propeller shaft. The second step is assembly of the upper front armoured fuselage. This is a one-piece unit in which two Vickers machine guns are located, and the cockpit instrument panel slides in the back. There are dials on the instrument panel that can be picked out in silver on a black background, or by whatever other method one prefers. It is best to paint all these parts before assembly.

The third stage is to glue the control pedals, joystick, and seat to the locating holes in the one-piece lower wing. Once again, pre-painting is best, remembering to paint the bottom portion of the wing acting as the cockpit floor in the same colour as the inside of the fuselage. The two fuselage halves then attach clamping the engine unit at the front, and this assembly joins directly onto the lower wing. The fit was very good, and no filler was needed.

The next stage is the relatively simple task of joining the upper armoured plate to the fuselage, fitting the cowling around the engine, and fitting the one-piece rear tailplane and tailfin. The fit is really very good, and no filler was needed. Some care needs to be taken on fitting the tailplane, as this and the tailfin both butt-join onto the fuselage, and if rushed, it is possible to put these on askew.

Mounting of the top wing is probably the trickiest part of the construction. There are eight (4 x 2) main struts, and four (2 x 2) fuselage struts. These all assemble individually onto the lower wing and mate directly onto the top wing. I know this part of modelling biplanes puts many modellers off, and in the case of the Snipe, there is also a wing stagger to consider. One can always make a cardboard jig (my own method is to use old business cards), but an easy trick for this model is to use the guides from the Airfix Sopwith Pup kit if you have it. The Airfix guides wedge nicely onto the top and lower wing, and in this scale, essentially the Pup and Snipe have a very similar stagger angle and wing spacing. Using the Pup's guides to pin the wings, each strut can then be individually attached. This is the most time-consuming part of building this model. However, in saying that, even the detail of the struts is very good, with pitots being included for example (more than can be said for Airfix!).

The final stage is to assemble the undercarriage, which is composed of two vee struts and a connecting bar to the two wheels. On my model, the connecting bar was too long and I had to cut it down in size, but apart from that, there was no problem. The model was rounded off by fitting the propeller onto its shaft and attaching the tailskid on the rear underside.

I rigged the kit with Aeroclub stretch thread, and for such a little airplane, there is a lot to do compared with the Camel.

Decals:

Decals for two Snipes are supplied: an RFC machine, and a Russian machine. No information whatsoever is given on either aircraft in the kit. It's crazy, but Eastern Express have printed a paint guide on the last sheet of the instructions for an RFC machine, indicating the required colours by letters A to J, which presumably originate from the original Toko kit. Almost unbelievably, the accompanying legend only lists the Humbrol numbers for codes A to E, and coupled with this, there are decals on the sheet that have no placement indication at all, with absolutely no explanation! Why do Eastern express consistently supply such poor painting guides on all their models? (This includes their reboxing of the old Frog kits that certainly would have had proper three-view paint guides with the original).

The decals are in register though and well printed. The decals go on well, do not overly silver, and can be moved around before setting. I chose to do the RFC machine, and didn't find that the PC10 paint showed through the white, as can sometimes happen. I think the red and the blue of the RFC roundels is a little on the light side though.

I can only presume that the Russian machine was used by the Bolsheviks in 1918 or so, and this only appears as a starboard profile on the side of the box in colours that I assume are the same as those of the RFC machine on the box art. The RFC machine however (E8102), is that of William Barker, and it is very famous (the giveaway is his portrait on the box art). His story is remarkable.

The Sopwith Snipe flown by Barker on 27 October 1918 attacked a German two-seater, and shot it down. Immediately, Barker was attacked by a Fokker from underneath, and was badly wounded in his right leg. While diving to evade his attacker, he flew directly into a formation of 15 German aircraft cruising below him. Thinking that he'd had it, he charged the formation, and shot down a different Fokker, with the rest of the German aircraft scattering. Just then, Barker came under attack again. He was shot in his other leg, forcing him to take evasive action. When he recovered, Barker found that he'd flown into yet another (different) German formation. (And you think you have a bad day at work!). He went on the attack again, and shot down another Fokker. Barker was then attacked and shot once more, this time in the arm shattering his elbow, and he lost consciousness. He recovered while in a dive, and on pulling out found himself again surrounded by yet more German aircraft. Thinking that he could not possibly survive as his Snipe was shot-up, he went to ram another Fokker, but the Snipe's engine suddenly recovered, and seizing the opportunity, he shot down the fighter and went into a steep dive, chased by lots of German aircraft. Barker flew low over the British trenches (who forced the following German scouts back with ground fire) and crash-landed in a field behind his own lines. He survived and was subsequently awarded the VC. All this, and the war had only two weeks to run before the armistice was called.

Accuracy:

One glaring problem if one wants to model the Barker machine is that the tailfin supplied with the kit is wrong. The supplied tailfin is the later full-sized version: this may be correct for the Russian machine, and also would be for a later Snipe if that's what you were modelling. However, the Barker machine had the earlier Sopwith tailfin that had a significant curved section cut away from the leading edge. You have two choices to correct this: (1) sculpt the supplied tailfin yourself to obtain the correct profile and redraw the lines etc., or (2) get the Eastern Express Sopwith Salamander kit at the same time as the Snipe kit. The Eastern Express Salamander kit has the correct tailfin as an option, and one can use that tailfin on the Snipe leaving the other Salamander tailfin for that model.

In real life, the Snipe had a span of 31 ft 1 inch and a length of 19 ft 10 inches. In 1/72 metric units these would scale as 13.1 cm and 8.4 cm, respectively. My model measures 13.2 cm in span and 9 cm in length (including the propeller).

Overall:

I assume that the Snipe has probably been kitted as a vacuform or as a resin kit before, but if it has, then they are not easy to obtain or are widely available, as I have never seen one. I believe that the original Toko kit is now out of production, so if you want a Snipe (and especially an injection moulded one) then this is it.

The Eastern Express Snipe makes a nice looking model, and should prove no difficulty for a modeller who has a couple of Airfix/Matchbox biplanes under their belt. A novice may get into trouble with the struts, but overall, the build quality is very good. A big no-no for this (and all Eastern Express kits) is the very poor painting and decaling guide that is all but a joke. On the plus side, this is real quality modelling for old-time pocket money prices, and for that alone Eastern Express should be thanked.

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