Valiant Wings Publishing Hawker Typhoon (inc. Tornado) 3rd Edition - Airframe & Miniature #2

[Mike]

Hawker Typhoon (inc. Tornado) 3rd Edition

ISBN: 9781912932245

Valiant Wings Publishing

 

 

Although the Hawker Typhoon was originally intended to be a direct replacement for the ageing Hurricane from their own stable, it never quite got around to fulfilling the role of medium altitude interceptor, but it did find its own niche before being replaced by the Tempest at the tail end of the piston-engined domination of the fighter era.  It was tough, with a thick wing that could carry plenty of fuel and weapons, originally intended to fit 12 brownings, but ending up with two 20mm cannons in each wing, and thanks to its powerful Napier Sabre engine it could catch and keep up with the recently developed Fw.190 that had caused the Supermarine engineers to go scurrying back to their drawing boards to improve the Spitfire’s performance again.  Its thick wing and other issues were to blame for its comparatively short tenure, to be replaced by the Tempest that bore a familial resemblance unless you were looking at the radial cowling variants that lacked the prominent chin intake.

 

 

The Book

This is the third edition of this particular book that we've reviewed, the second coinciding roughly with both the 1:72 and 1:24 offerings from Airfix, which weren't included in the original back in 2011, as well as the new car-door variant that was released in 2016.  In the last few years we have had the Eduard reboxings of the Hasegawa kit too, and now after a seemly pause, the 3rd Edition of this useful and interesting book appears.  Updates and expansions have been applied of course, although perhaps fewer than the differences between editions 1 and 2.

 

 

 

It is perfect-bound and extends to 176 pages on glossy paper, with tons of photographs, diagrams and profiles, the modern pictures being in colour, while the contemporary content is black and white due to that being the predominant film format of the day.  It is of course written by Richard A Franks, with profiles by Richard J Caruana, isometric drawings by Jacek Jackiewicz, plus smaller scale models by Libor Jekl and Steve A Evans, and two 1:24 Airfix kits by Dani Zamarbide and John Wilkes. If you're familiar with the series, you'll know that the content is broken down into the Airframe section that deals with the 1:1 real thing, and the miniature section that covers the scale models and has a number of builds, plus a host of photographic detail that will be of great help to the modeller.  There is also information to be had on the Tornado (no, not that one), which was the progenitor of the Typhoon and looked somewhere between it and the Hurricane it was intended to replace – if you squint.

 

The headings remain the same, laid out as below:

 

Airframe Chapters

Evolution - Tornado

Evolution - Typhoon

Typhoon Production Variants

Drawing-Board Projects

Camouflage & Markings

Survivor

Colour Profiles

 

Miniature Chapters

Hawker Typhoon Kits

Building a Selection

Building a Collection

In Detail: The Hawker Typhoon

 

Appendices

i Tornado & Typhoon Kit List

ii Tornado & Typhoon Accessory List

iii Typhoon Decal List

iv Tornado & Typhoon Production

v Bibliography

 

 

 

A set of fold-out plans in 1:48 are still there at the very rear of the book, and everything is up to Valiant's usual standards of research and print quality, the plans penned by Jacek Jackiewicz, and as you can see at the top, they have reused the cover illustration of a pair of Typhoons besting a German flying boat over the briny.

 

 

 

 

Conclusion

If you missed out on either of the original editions, are looking forward to building one or more of the newer kits, or just have an interest in the Typhoon in general, this book should be of great interest.  As usual, my favourite section is the isometric drawings showing the variants and the projects that didn’t reach service for one reason or another.

 

Highly recommended.

 

 

Review sample courtesy of