Hasegawa 1/72 P-8A Poseidon 'VP-10 w/Radar Pod'
| KIT #: | 10856 |
| PRICE: | 3800 yen SRP |
| DECALS: | One option |
| REVIEWER: | Scott Van Aken |
| NOTES: | 2023 release |
| HISTORY |
The Boeing P-8 Poseidon (formerly the Multimission Maritime Aircraft or MMA) is a military aircraft developed for the United States Navy (USN). The aircraft has been developed by Boeing Defense, Space & Security, modified from the 737-800ERX.
The P-8 conducts anti-submarine warfare (ASW), anti-surface warfare (ASUW), and shipping interdiction, along with an electronic signals intelligence (ELINT) role. This involves carrying torpedoes, depth charges, SLAM-ER missiles, Harpoon anti-ship missiles, and other weapons. It is able to drop and monitor sonobuoys. It is designed to operate in conjunction with the Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton Broad Area Maritime Surveillance unmanned aerial vehicle.
The P-8 is operated by the United States Navy, the Indian Navy, and the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). It has also been ordered by the UK's Royal Air Force (RAF), the Royal Norwegian Air Force (RNoAF), the Royal New Zealand Air Force(RNZAF), and the Republic of Korea Navy (ROKN). There are currently 12 USN fleet squadrons and one training squadron operating the type.
| THE KIT |
I am sure that Hasegawa was thrilled to learn that the
P-8 was being developed. After all, they have had a 737-800 kit on the
market for quite some time and now they get a whole new line of kits for
just the cost of a single new sprue!
So it turned out to be. The 737-800 is one of their relatively newer line of kits. It includes a fuselage bare of windows, a hefty nose weight, the standard Hasegawa 1/200 display stand, a set of 'wheels up' bits that simply plug into place and the older style engines. By this I mean that the engines are not the single mold that the newest kits offer. The newest kits also have horizontally split fuselages and this one is the 'standard' vertical split.
OK, so what is new? Well, that is the K sprue. You see, the
P-8 has a ton of lumps and bumps sticking out of the fuselage in all sorts of
places. Frankly, I do not recall any but the SPOD P-3s sporting protuberances
such as what the P-8 carries. For those fearing a need to break out a tape
measure to figure out where all these pieces go, fear not. Hasegawa has modified
the fuselage mold to include little areas where the holes are flashed over so
all you have to do is follow instructions and open up what is needed. Of course,
you'll also have to fill in some unnecessary side doors, cargo bay doors and
panel lines, but you are shown just what is needed. An interesting feature of
the P-8 compared to airliners is that the winglets are actually somewhat
downturned. Looks odd, but there it is.
Note also that you'll have to fill in various airliner engraved panel lines.
Instructions are standard Hasegawa stuff with Gunze paint references but basically you are looking at overall FS 16440, light gull grey, a pretty standard color that any USN modeler will have aplenty. Leading edges of flight surfaces and engines are silver. Markings are for the box art plane from VP-10. I'm guessing, but I imagine that the radar pod is part of a SPOD modification as they used to put a bunch of special equipment into various early P-3s and 'hide' them within deployed squadrons. They were fairly easy to spot on the ground as they usually had painted on sonobouy chutes or unusual antennas.
| CONCLUSIONS |
| REFERENCES |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_P-8_Poseidon
July 2023 Copyright ModelingMadness.com. All rights reserved. No
reproduction in part or in whole without express permission from the editor. If you would like your product reviewed fairly and fairly quickly, please
contact the editor or see other details in the
Note to
Contributors.