Academy 1/72 Hawker Typhoon 1b

      The Hawker Typhoon was intended to supersede the Hurricane as a front line fighter. It represented a quantum leap in design, for it was the first aircraft  that Hawker would build that no longer used wood, wire and canvas in it's construction. Teething problems with the new and untried 2,000 bhp H-24 Napier Sabre,(an engine program not unlike the Curtiss Wright R-3350 for the Boeing B-29)combined with structural failures of the empennage caused many headaches for the RAF's new fighter being introduced into frontline service. However, Sidney Camm and his team worked overtime to get the problems sorted out, with Napier raining in on their quality control ( simple things like making sure there were no metal shavings in the crankcase....) to improve reliability in the technologically advanced, yet overly complicated Sabre.

     History has shown that the Typhoon, once it's troubles were sorted out, was a more then capable fighter bomber, able to attack any target, be it tank, building or enemy aircraft, and hold it's own in any fight. While not a pretty airplane like the Spitfire, it represented the can do spirit embodied by British aviation in WWII, in that it may not be attractive, but it got the job done ( although, personally I like they way it looks )!

     In 1/72 scale Airfix and Frog( theirs being a “car door” 1b) were the only game in town for many years. Academy as of the early nineties has been giving us accurate and affordable kits of every basic aircraft from WWII. The Typhoon 1b was released in 1998 and is still currently available. While researching info about this kit on the internet, I saw very little in the way of good kit reviews. Plus there was no kit preview here on MM, so I have set out to fill that void!

    The kit comes with three molded in grey sprues, a two piece canopy and a decal sheet with markings for two aircraft. Ok, here are the good things I see about this kit:

      Engraved panel lines

     Multi piece cockpit with separate floor, stick, rudder pedals, seat, seat armor, control panel and reflector gunsight

     Choice of three or four bladed prop.

     Detailed landing gear, decent hub detail on the main wheels.

     Two piece gear doors with separate hydraulic cylinders.

     Separate radiator/oil cooler/supercharger intake with fine screen detail.

     Rockets with separate mounting rails and tail fins.

      I also used a set of 72^nd drawings done by A.L. Bentley from my copy of “Aircraft Archive vol.1 Fighters of World War Two” to see if the kit was correct in length and span. Laying the parts over the plans showed that it was!

       Now for the negative side:

The tailplanes in the kit only allow you to correctly build the model with a three bladed prop! Typhoon's with four bladed props used the larger Tempest tailplanes to help counter the increased thrust generated by the larger prop. Also the radiator only has detail on the front side, the back side is blank!

 Also the exhaust pipes are molded onto the fuselage sides. Fortunately Quickboost makes resin exhaust pipes and the larger tailplanes for this kit, so with some minor surgery you can bring this kit up to snuff, or build it out of the box! Either way it should build up into nice replica of the real thing.

Kit preview  care of my wallet!

Scott Jamieson

August 2010 

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