Thanks to the likes of TAMIYA, Hasegawa, Eduard, Accurate Miniatures et al, military WW2 aircraft modellers in the ‘90s have revelled in a glut of newly tooled 48th scale kits. 

Surprisingly missing from the seemingly unending list of new 48th scale WW2 releases in recent years has been the Hawker Typhoon.  Hasegawa came to the rescue of Typhoon fans in late 1998 with a new tooled kit of the first production Typhoon, commonly referred to as the “Car Door” canopy version. 

Recently Hasegawa released two versions of the later production “Teardrop” canopy Typhoons (one with a three blade prop while the latest release has a four blade prop). 

The Typhoon Mk.IB kit I’m building is Hasegawa’s release number JT60 (“Teardrop” canopy and three blade prop). 

Markings are provided for two aircraft.  The first aircraft is named “CHINA BRITISH” from No. 247 Squadron with serial no. MN316 and ZY B codes, this is the box-top scheme resplendent in fuselage and wing wraparound D-Day invasion stripes.  The second aircraft is from No. 183 Squadron with serial no. JR128 and HF L codes. 

My initial impressions after opening the box, cutting out most of the parts, cleaning up the sprue tags and dry-fitting the major parts were rather mixed.  HURRAY, at last, a new Typhoon kit !  Those wings looks great, as does the interior parts and rockets.  BUT “hold the phone Batman”, look at those insert plugs for the fuselage.  YUK ! 

Now I’m not a big fan of inserts.  Why ?  Because we all know they rarely fit perfectly.  Hasegawa’s Typhoon has a cockpit insert into each fuselage part as the fuselages are the same for the Car Door and Teardrop kits.  The inserts (parts G1 and G2) are not exactly small as they measure approx. 5 x 1.5 cms.  On my kit, the fit of the insert into the right fuselage was excellent, in fact it was almost perfect.  However, the left fuselage insert was not as good. 

Having gone to the trouble to tool a new Typhoon, perhaps Hasegawa could have (and should have) molded separate whole fuselages for the Car Door and Teardrop thus avoiding the dreaded inserts.  Now this is not meant as a “Hasegawa flame” but surely full fuselage parts are not too much to ask, especially after Hasegawa gave us separate fuselages for the almost identical Bf109 G-6 and G-14 (short tail for the G-6 and a tall tail for the G-14).

If you can deal with the fuselage inserts, the kit looks great and features nicely molded parts with a mixture of fine and heavy detail.  The cockpit is one area where the detail is very fine and looks good straight-out-of-the-box.  The only change I made was to substitute a KMC resin seat (with molded harness and lap belts) from their set designed to update the Monogram kit.  

Once you’ve assembled and glued the cockpit in place there aren’t many parts left to make up the overall airframe (sans canopies, rockets, undercarriage legs and doors).  The fuselage halves go together well, except I found were the front of the left insert ended there was a slight gap which required filling and sanding.  The rear vertical seam of each insert also had to be filled and sanded. 

The wings are a simple three-piece assembly.  There is a one-piece lower wingfoil plus left and right upper wings - their fit is excellent.  The wheel wells are quite deep and only require painting and a wash to look very convincing. 

I’ve managed to progress as far as matting the fuselage and wings.  If built straight-from-the-box you’ll probably end up with a gap at each wingroot (just like me when I attempted to dry-fit the two sub-assembles).  To overcome the gap I inserted a few “fuselage spreaders” (plastic sprue cut to the right length) towards the front, middle and rear of the wingroot.  The fuselage was widened just enough to reduce the gap. 

Forming a suitable “spreader” (aka “spacer”) is simply a matter of lateral thinking combined with some trial and error 

·               break off a piece of plastic sprue from one of the kit’s frames,

·               cut it to the approximate length (be a bit on the long side),

·               trim and/or sand and dry-fit the spreader - repeat until it starts to spread the wingroot area,

·               ensure the spreader ends are angled to fit flush against the inner fuselage side,

·               dry-fit the slightly widened fuselage to the wingfoil (eliminating the gaps),

·               glue the spreader into place and allow it to set thoroughly,

·               finally, glue the fuselage to the wingfoil and clean up the seams. 

I’ll reserve my opinion on the overall quality of the kit when it is complete.  Certainly the fuselage inserts are a big disappointment and are perhaps unacceptable in a kit produced in 1998/99 (in my humble opinion only).   

The wingroot gaps were also surprising, however these were easily taken care of with fuselage spreaders. 

Happy modelling to all !

 JOHN KERR

of the South Australian Plastic
Modellers Association, Adelaide, South Australia
kerrj@chariot.com.au (new email address as of August 12, 1999)