Hasegawa 1/48 Hurricane Mk.IIB

The Hurricane Mk.IIB first took to the air in June 1940 and was aimed at the Hurricane’s effectiveness in the ground attack role. It featured the improved Merlin XX engine of the Mk.IIA, a new and slightly longer propeller spinner, and 4 additional wing-mounted .303 in (7.7 mm) Browning machine guns, for a total of 12 guns. The first aircraft were built in February 1941 as Mk.IIA, renamed to Mk.IIB after April, for a total of 3,050 built to November 1942. For use in North Africa the plane was fitted with a Vokes dust filter and the pilots were issued with a desert survival kit, including a bottle of water behind the cockpit.

Hasegawa came in 1997 with their very good quarter scale Hurricanes, covering every variant, with the kits engineered in such a way as to use as many common sprues as possible, a typical Hasegawa trend. The specific version is the 1999 Mk.IIB, bought in 2005 from a (sadly now permanently closed) Athens hobby shop.

The kit comes in the typical excellent Hasegawa medium sized top opening box, featuring a superlative Koike Shigeo box art of two 274 Sq RAF tropicalized Hurricanes flying over the North African desert.

Upon opening the box, I was greeted with 97 medium gray styrene parts, arranged in 12 sprues of various sizes, all bagged together, meaning potential scratches. Molding is superb with no flash at all. A small number of ejector pin marks were noted, with the ones practically unhidden lying in the main gear bay, the inner tire walls and the underside of the exhausts.

Panel lines are recessed all over and very well done. Some raised rivets are molded onto the top of the wing panels where the guns reside. Fabric representation, an essential aspect of every Hurricane kit, is also very well done.

Cockpit is sufficiently represented with all basic elements, including a number of levers found at the real plane. The side frame tubing is also well done. The instrument panel has nice raised detail, which can either be painted or the nice instrument decal can be used to succumb onto it.

Landing gear and bays are also finely represented, catching the particular busy looks of the real thing and the same can be said for the radiator assembly. The fishtail exhaust pipes look good, as does the one piece prop, with the famous polycap having to be trapped in the spinner. Two carburettor intakes are provided, normal and tropicalized.

Clear parts are superbly molded and crystal clear. Instructions come to the usual excellent Hasegawa pamphlet style, including a short history of the type, a parts diagram, with the straightforward construction spread in 10 concise steps, with full color callouts given throughout. Three b/w pics of a completed model are also included.

Two RAF schemes are provided, for a 402 (Canadian) Squadron and a 274 Squadron bird, the latter being tropical. Decals, though excellently printed and looking in good condition, have their white areas represented as ivory.

Instructions want you to first assemble the cockpit and trap it between the fuselage halves, followed by the front engine cowling. The wings, including the main gear bays, are then assembled and attached, followed by the tail planes and the correct, for the version you build, carburettor intake.

Landing gear is next, followed by the radiator, bombs installation and fitting of the wing leading edges gun sections, the landing and tip lights and other small bits.

The propeller is finally assembled and attached, together with the exhausts, the glare shields (only for the non tropicalized version), the antenna mast, the canopy and a couple of other tiny bits, ending a seemingly uncomplicated and pleasant  construction.

Though at areas superseded by the newer, more detailed Airfix offering, this looks to be still a very good kit of the iconic Hawker Hurricane. Molding is superb, general shapes look correct, panel lines are nicely engraved, details at key areas are sufficient, transparencies are excellent, as are the instructions. Decals, though excellently printed, feature the “ivorizing white” Hasegawa phenomenon of the past. The build itself looks nice and uncomplex (something less and less common with today’s wonder kits) and fit is said to be very good.

If you have one in your stash or come across one, it is a kit worth tackling.

Happy modeling!

Spiros Pendedekas

Decenber 2022

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