1/48 Airfix Hawker Siddeley Buccaneer S2

by Karl W Branson

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Here is my 1/48 scale Hawker Siddeley Buccaneer by Airfix. The Buccaneer was a solid brute of an aircraft that had a long and distinguished career. The Buccaneer became operational in 1962 and saw action in Iraq in 1991 in support of Tornado’s. The last squadron was finally disbanded in 1994. My model depicts Buccaneer XV156 built at Holme-on-Spalding-Moore. This aircraft took part in the bombing of the Supertanker ‘Torray Canyon’ that had run aground on The ‘Seven Stones’ , just off Lands End - South-West English coast. 

As this Airfix model had been out of production for some time, I had purchased a couple of Buccaneers from eBay, but I managed to find this particular kit on sale at a local car boot sale, no box, all the parts having been removed from the sprues just loose in a bag!!

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As this kit did not come in a box, I emptied the contents of the plastic bag in to a Tupperware box. On inspection I found that I had actually got about one and a half Buccaneers in the bag, the main find being that I had got two sets of cockpit canopies, and about three set’s of decals – all for £2.50GBP. Another thing I like about this kit is the instruction book is a very nicely detailed glossy covered magazine, with some very good call outs for detail painting.

Construction started with the cockpit. The stock cockpit has decals for instrument panels and I don’t really like that, so I scratch built most of the instrument panels. The ejection seats are not too bad, but required seatbelts that I made from thin tin and buckles from styrene. I detailed the rest of the cockpit tub with brass and solder wire. I then fixed the tub in to the top half of the fuselage. As this would be a tail sitter, I installed about 25gr of Milliput and lead shot to keep the nose down.

The next major step was to join the two halves of the fuselage together. This was not made easy due to the fact that the halves are very badly warped. I had previously met Trevor Snowden of Airfix at IPMS(UK) Telford 2003 show, he told me that the halves were not so much warped but it had some thing to do with the way that they were moulded so that they would come out of the mould cleanly. Anyway, he gave me some good tips on getting the thing together neatly. The trick was to join a small section at a time together. I started on the port side of the nose and let that set. Next was the port air intake and wing stub, again letting that set. Port aft quarter and then back up the starboard side in the same step by step manner. The result was a very well aligned set of joints that I did not think I would have been able to achieve given that on the starboard side, the top air intake was about 5mm out from the lower half.

Next were the wing halves and the tail section, all of this went together without a problem. The ‘Slipper’ fuel tanks were made up and installed. The kit’s locator pins for the fuel tanks are just a bit close to the wing fold than they should be, so I moved them inboard just a bit.

Another part of the kit that I was not happy with were the jet pipes for the Rolls Royce Spey engines, so I replaced them with some short lengths of brass tube, this gives a much neater pipe. Another part that needed replacing was the probe on the port wing; this had been broken in the bag. I used the main part that attaches to the wing and cut off the broken part of the probe. Then using a pin drill, I cut a hole in the end so I could insert a thin brass rod, replacing the plastic probe.

The Under carriage was assembled next and painted separately, ready to be installed later. 

Next it was time to paint. My Bird was going to be Dark Sea Gray over White, depicting an aircraft from No. 800 Naval Air Squadron, 1966.

For the underside I used Halfords Appliance white, this I decanted and sprayed using my airbrush. The upper surface was airbrushed with Humbrol #123 dark sea grey. The leading edge was picked out with Aluminium and the intake rings painted silver.

Finally I installed the undercarriage with CA and lastly the cockpit glazing using clear fix.

As I had previously mentioned, I got plenty of decals just in case I made a mistake, but they all went on with no real problems. I did find them a bit on the thick side, so I had to use a lot of Micro Sol to get them to settle in the recessed panel lines; they reacted well and settled in nicely.

I am very pleased with this model, and I think it has turned out quite well. I now also have quite a few spare parts if I need them for the other three Buccaneers in my stash of model kits.

Enjoy!

Karl

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Photos and text © by Karl W Branson