Revell Spitfire and Hurricane 1/72

[Navy Bird]

Maybe there is an even older Spitfire kit than the one I posted the link for? I think that one was from 1962 - perhaps they made something in the 50s?

[Navy Bird]

Here is a cool boxing from 1966 of the Spit, Hurri, and 109.

http://www.oldmodelk...chtext=spitfire

Cheers,

Bill

[Test Graham]

The one from the 60s is the one we were talking about. I don't recall an earlier Revell one - at least not in 1/72. I'll have a look in the Revell book but don't recall an earlier one in any scale. One earlier 1/72 Spitfire that was widely available was the Lindberg Mk.V. I had a couple in 1959 but have no particular memories of its shape.

[Hhhalifaxxx]

This is the Hurricane we're talking about, with the original boxart (by Lynwood, I think):

As for the accuracy of the Revell Spitfire II wingspan, I didn't actually measure it but I remember it was about the same as the Airfix Spitfire I wingspan, which I used as my yardstick. I still have an unbuilt specimen at home, but it is not now within easy reach. Anyway, I was thinking if a couple of cuts in the right places would allow for a proper shrinking of the fuselage for a proper 1/72 size. (No, no sacrilege at all: models are for building, not collecting!).

[Byron Boyd]

Boy, those were the days, weren't they? I still remember how excited I would be with every new Revell fighter release, especially when they branched out into WWI kits. At 9 and 10, they were really the cat's meow. Airfix came along a little later (here in the Colonies), and theirs was a mixed bag - some really wonderful, and some (like the early Stuka) that left something to be desired even in my (then) young eyes. I really loved the B-17, the B-24 and Halifax kits (magical kits!), as well as the Boston, the Hudson, and the Anson. I was not so wild about the Stuka, the Zero, and the Fw-190D, the last two seeming a bit crude next to their Revell counterparts. Reference material was at a minimum - the profile series hadn't even started yet, nor Scale Modeler, so accuracy isues was more about how this kit looked in comparison to that kit. LOL, but still, what a great time to be a kid!

[John]

I can remember clearly coming out of the cinema with my dad after seeing the Battle of Britian and heading straight for Woolworths to find a kit that looked like one of the planes from the film. The only one was the Airfix Stuka. I didn't have a local source of FROG kits in those days so it was the Revell Spitfire, Hurricane and 109 that had to be tracked down, together with the Airfix He-111 which was the only kit of the type I could find. I think we had to wait for the Matchbox kit to get a representative early He111H.

I remember the Spitfire being moulded in a light turquoise, the Hurricane in green and the 109 in pale blue grey. The BoB markings and, in the case of the Spitfire and 109 opening canopies, were major sales points to the 9-year-old me.

My son bought the most recent incarnation of the 109 and it now has a bomb and drop tank, which I imagine were added during the "3-in-1" boxing. IIRC the Spitfire got a 2-bladed prop at the same time but I can't remember the Hurricane appearing in that style of box.

I really liked the Revell fighters, WW1 and WW2, particularly the ones with "features". The P-40, Tempest and IIRC the Tony had sliding canopies, the Me262's canopy hinged although I could never get it to work, the I-16 and the Airacobra had removable engine panels.

Simpler times!

John

[Max Headroom]

A couple of years ago the Daily Telegraph had a promotion whereby you could get the Spitfire and Hurricane for free from Toys R Us. They employed the old 'problem mouldings, with black and white representations of the modern versions of the kits together with the transfer sheets from the modern renditions.

The boxes were marked 'limited edition' LOL!

I got both and neither figure in my 'build this decade' pile.

Trevor

[Nick Millman]

As for the accuracy of the Revell Spitfire II wingspan, I didn't actually measure it but I remember it was about the same as the Airfix Spitfire I wingspan, which I used as my yardstick. I still have an unbuilt specimen at home, but it is not now within easy reach. Anyway, I was thinking if a couple of cuts in the right places would allow for a proper shrinking of the fuselage for a proper 1/72 size. (No, no sacrilege at all: models are for building, not collecting!).

The kit is not overscale - at least not when compared to the Granger plans - but the rear fuselage is about 5mm too long, the extra length being just in front of the tail. This fault is exacerbated by the fin which is too narrow with the leading edge too steeply angled.

[Ed Russell]

I had forgotten the Frog Spitfire I/II/Va

This one....

I did find a use for mine - this thread has two of them.....

http://www.britmodel...showtopic=52528

You can see it cost me A$0.45 in about 1966!

Edited January 5, 2013 by Ed Russell

[Nick Millman]

I can remember clearly coming out of the cinema with my dad after seeing the Battle of Britian and heading straight for Woolworths to find a kit that looked like one of the planes from the film. The only one was the Airfix Stuka. I didn't have a local source of FROG kits in those days so it was the Revell Spitfire, Hurricane and 109 that had to be tracked down, together with the Airfix He-111 which was the only kit of the type I could find. I think we had to wait for the Matchbox kit to get a representative early He111H.

I remember the Spitfire being moulded in a light turquoise, the Hurricane in green and the 109 in pale blue grey. The BoB markings and, in the case of the Spitfire and 109 opening canopies, were major sales points to the 9-year-old me.

My son bought the most recent incarnation of the 109 and it now has a bomb and drop tank, which I imagine were added during the "3-in-1" boxing. IIRC the Spitfire got a 2-bladed prop at the same time but I can't remember the Hurricane appearing in that style of box.

I really liked the Revell fighters, WW1 and WW2, particularly the ones with "features". The P-40, Tempest and IIRC the Tony had sliding canopies, the Me262's canopy hinged although I could never get it to work, the I-16 and the Airacobra had removable engine panels.

Simpler times!

John

Nice memories, thanks. I seem to remember the Frog kits being less readily available than Airfix too but the small Revell kits could be purchased in W H Smith and even my local village Post Office! The Hurricane was marketed in the 3-in-1 box with one of the options being a black night intruder IIRC. The Spitfire appeared in two different small black-ended boxes with the earlier one copyrighted 1962. This box has 'Famous Plane Series' on the front and the 41 Sqn RAF crest on the side. The kits are identical - YT-L P7665 - but the instruction sheets are slightly different with the earlier sheet having an advert on the back for other Revell kits in the series and the 1962/63 Revell catalogue whilst the later sheet had instructions in French, German and Swedish on the back. The decal sheet includes a Sky coloured fuselage band but in the instructions the spinner, fuselage band and under surfaces are keyed as 'Sky Blue'.

Nick

Edited January 5, 2013 by Nick Millman

[Nick Millman]

This one....

I did find a use for mine - this thread has two of them.....

http://www.britmodel...showtopic=52528

You can see it cost me A$0.45 in about 1966!

Thanks for that. I do recognise it now but just could not recall it at the time of the film. Thanks for the link to the thread too - nice work!

Nick

[John]

I don't think I ever saw that FROG Spitfire, or was even aware of its existence, until the Novo release.

Nick, thanks for filling in more of the background of the Revell kits. Interesting that the Spitfire spinner and band were "Sky Blue".

John

[Work In Progress]

The Hurricane boxart is that of the new one, and the old one didn't come with bombs. - but those who ever saw it will be able to tell what actually came inside.

The box art on the Daily Telegraph release of the Hurricane is indeed of the recent Revell IIB, but the kit inside is the old Revell I. I got caught out that way. Still, for the three quid it cost me it was hardly a disaster. What I can say about the old beast is that the moulds are still in good shape. There is very little flash or wear evident on mine - the plastic looks as if it's come straight from 1966. Also, the treatment of the fabric of the rear fuselage is a lot better than some more modern kits (yes, that's *you* I'm talking to, Hasegawa).

[Navy Bird]

Great thread, and good memories! I find it rather interesting that a lot of the old kits we turn our noses up at, are actually more accurate in shape than many of the new tooled efforts. I don't think that's an indictment of CAD, just that the folks who were measuring the surviving planes, building master patterns by hand, and polishing the molds by hand perhaps saw their work as a labour of love, not just a job.

Cheers,

Bill

[viscount806x]

The early (1960s) Revell Spitfire and Hurricane were perhaps not very good kits, the Hurricane being the better, but not so bad as you describe. The Spitfire had a very short wingspan, but otherwise looked quite nice - being a young teenager at the time I wasn't over critical but what you describe couldn't very well be missed! The number of parts was much the same as the Airfix equivalents but perhaps less than the later Matchbox kits of the 70s - quite another era really!

More generally, I'd suggest that Revell kits of the period were slightly better models than the Airfix, if anything, but as always there was considerable variation in both.

PS having been overlapped, I have to say I remember their Bf109E was one of the better kits of the time. I even had two of them, which was rare for anything other than Airfix. It certainly was far better than the Airfix Bf109F/G which was its direct competitor - this is before the fairly awful Airfix Bf109G-6 of long-lasting memory, and predates the Matchbox and Airfix Bf109Es. I can only suggest that the moulds were well worn when you got yours.

My experiences exactly. I first built Revell kits in the early to mid 60s and they were (at the time) thought to be quite a bit esoteric compared to the racks of Airfix gazed at in Woolies. My first was the Spit II which I reckoned looked more of a SpIt than the Airfix JEJ IX and the Hurricane was also very nice but obviously a bit of a caricature. Procopious says he built the Bf109E and it was horrible. Well I built it at the ripe old age of 15 and thought it absolutely wonderful. Horses for courses I guess.

I have replacement kits for all those today and still open them for a look and a sigh now and again.

Edited January 5, 2013 by viscount806x

[Work In Progress]

Great thread, and good memories! I find it rather interesting that a lot of the old kits we turn our noses up at, are actually more accurate in shape than many of the new tooled efforts. I don't think that's an indictment of CAD, just that the folks who were measuring the surviving planes, building master patterns by hand, and polishing the molds by hand perhaps saw their work as a labour of love, not just a job.

Cheers,

Bill

Coming back to the old Revell Hurricane, since I how have it out on the table, the main visible accuracy issues are that the fin and rudder are wildly wrong (which I can pretty easily fix) and the top of the nose is too narrow (which I shan't bother to fix).

No doubt more will come to light during assembly but on the sprue the rest of it doesn't look too bad.

[John]

Shamelessly lifted from Ebay:

This looks like the last style of FROG box so the kit must have stayed in production almost to the end, although I don't remember it being in the last catalogue I had - I must say though if I'd parted with my hard-earned in 1976 and found this, I would not have been impressed!

John

[CPNGROATS]

An occasional build of one of these old "stagers" is good therapy [iMO]...

Cheers,

ggc

[Nick Millman]

An occasional build of one of these old "stagers" is good therapy [iMO]...

Cheers,

ggc

I wholeheartedly agree. I'm an unashamed enthusiast of the retro build where one can enjoy building an ancient kit OOB for its own sake with great dollops of nostalgia rather than tube glue and apply more careful finishing techniques than were defeated by the youthful impatience and enthusiasm to get the same kit "flying" first time around in the 1960's. This usually involved at most a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon at the kitchen table.

Nick

[Nick Millman]

Shamelessly lifted from Ebay:

This looks like the last style of FROG box so the kit must have stayed in production almost to the end, although I don't remember it being in the last catalogue I had - I must say though if I'd parted with my hard-earned in 1976 and found this, I would not have been impressed!

John

The last batch was indeed this box style - a mere 64,000 issued from 1974-1976.

Nick

[viscount806x]

Shamelessly lifted from Ebay:

This looks like the last style of FROG box so the kit must have stayed in production almost to the end, although I don't remember it being in the last catalogue I had - I must say though if I'd parted with my hard-earned in 1976 and found this, I would not have been impressed!

John

The then 'new' FROG Mk VIII/IX was also then around. It wasn't a bad kit except for the thick wings (which could be thinned down) and the lack of the now obligatory gull wing under section. But then the also new Hasegawa Mk1 didn't have that either, only the Airfix Vb as I remember. This older 1A/Va kit you illustrate went back to the ark. Described in the Hellstrom book as possibly the 'best selling Frog kit of all time' it was as you say in production from 1959 to 1976, apparently without a rest. The moulds must have been permanently hot. They were reworked by AMT in 1968 which extended the life.

[viscount806x]

I believe those 60s Hurricane and Spitfire molds were among the very first, constant-scale, 1/72 kits issued in America by Revell right after their pioneering B-17F Fortress (as the Memphis Belle, of course). They were part of a series called “Warbirds†– I still have a few of them. The Hurricane was very crude, with a completely erroneous spine under the fin, and the Spitfire’s fuselage was overscale (I think about 1/68 to 1/70), while its wings were correctly scaled at 1/72. The worst of them all was probably their P-51D (the one with the Millie G paint scheme with a flaming red top colour instead of olive drab), with a misshapen nose and totally wrong, trapezoidal wheel covers even I as a teenager could see were grossly inaccurate – and which RoG inexplicably decided to reissue only a couple of years ago. On the other hand, the Bf109E had a refinement not seen in other small-scale Messerschmitt models, the aileron mass balances – which I find sorely lacking even in many modern kits. (Curiously, HobbyBoss has them in their 109E boxings but not in their 109G series.) The Warbird series were a product of their time and should be commended in bringing attention to various WWII types little-known by Western modellers then – Ki-61 Hien, Ki-84 Hayate (a very good kit as I recall), Macchi C.200, PZL P.11c, Polikarpov I-16. There were also some WWI fighters. In my opinion, the best of them all was the PT-17 Kaydet trainer, which still holds its own today and was recently reissued along with another good model, the P-26 Peashooter.

The series as a whole was tooled by Revell GB in Potters Bar, Herts. I think they were rushed a bit and the parent company in California were a bit upset about the poor accuracy of some of them, particularly the U.S. types.

[viscount806x]

I can remember clearly coming out of the cinema with my dad after seeing the Battle of Britian and heading straight for Woolworths to find a kit that looked like one of the planes from the film. The only one was the Airfix Stuka. I didn't have a local source of FROG kits in those days so it was the Revell Spitfire, Hurricane and 109 that had to be tracked down, together with the Airfix He-111 which was the only kit of the type I could find. I think we had to wait for the Matchbox kit to get a representative early He111H.

I remember the Spitfire being moulded in a light turquoise, the Hurricane in green and the 109 in pale blue grey. The BoB markings and, in the case of the Spitfire and 109 opening canopies, were major sales points to the 9-year-old me.

My son bought the most recent incarnation of the 109 and it now has a bomb and drop tank, which I imagine were added during the "3-in-1" boxing. IIRC the Spitfire got a 2-bladed prop at the same time but I can't remember the Hurricane appearing in that style of box.

I really liked the Revell fighters, WW1 and WW2, particularly the ones with "features". The P-40, Tempest and IIRC the Tony had sliding canopies, the Me262's canopy hinged although I could never get it to work, the I-16 and the Airacobra had removable engine panels.

Simpler times!

John

John, The Hurricane certainly was included in the 'Collectors Choice' range. The kit itself seems identical to the original release (1962 - stamped on the centre section) but acquired a 'Watts' two blade prop in addition to the three blader still included. Here is a not so good picture of the kit from my archive. Incidentally, this was one of the kits which they declined to try and make the canopy slide open.

Nige B

Edited January 6, 2013 by viscount806x

[John]

John, The Hurricane certainly was included in the 'Collectors Choice' range. The kit itself seems identical to the original release (1962 - stamped on the centre section) but acquired a 'Watts' two blade prop in addition to the three blader still included. Here is a not so good picture of the kit from my archive. Incidentally, this was one of the kits which they declined to try and make the canopy slide open.

Nige B

That's quite something, thanks. Maybe it was the Hurricane rather that the Spitfire that got the 2-blader. The only kit in that series I can clearly recall building was the Tempest, which I think got a set of drop tanks to go with the rockets.

John

Edited to confirm that the Spitfire did get a 2-bladed prop:

http://t2.gstatic.co...LXas23CCNLVWH4g

J

Edited January 6, 2013 by John

[viscount806x]

That's quite something, thanks. Maybe it was the Hurricane rather that the Spitfire that got the 2-blader. The only kit in that series I can clearly recall building was the Tempest, which I think got a set of drop tanks to go with the rockets.

John

Edited to confirm that the Spitfire did get a 2-bladed prop:

http://t2.gstatic.co...LXas23CCNLVWH4g

J

, No, the Spit also got a two blader and lost its sliding canopy and display stand. The canopy was modified for the U.S. and later UK editions anyway and I also have U.S. and later UK ones without the display stand. Not sure when they saved a ha'penny by deleting those. I can do pictures if anyone is interested.