1/72 Trumpeter  Wyvern S.4

Operation Musketeer, 1956

by Craig Sargent

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With only a handful of airframes built, this release from Trumpeter has to fall in to the “why do we get a main stream kit of this aircraft with so many more important aircraft still waiting” category (along with the upcoming Airfix TSR2). Now before I get labelled an Anglophobe, I am starting to get a bit more enamoured of some of the Empire’s aircraft from the twilight era of the prop driven frontline combat aircraft. That and the fact it has Suez/Operation Musketeer stripes on it… I’m not going to go into the history as it’s not really something I am fully up on, apart from some research I did while building this superb, if somewhat over-engineered, kit.

Construction is very much straight-forward apart from a few little “gotchas” along the way. The cockpit is almost straight out of the box, but with a few small improvements. Firstly, the large throttle quadrant was noticeably absent, so a spare from a Cooper Details Spitfire set was added. The “gunsight” was woefully lacking in every area, looking more like a doorstop than an aiming accoutrement. I scratchbuilt one using some images gleaned from numerous searches on the web (not an easy bit of information to find). Finally, the very nice kit seat was lacking seatbelts, so was replaced with a resin item from Pavla.

Once the instrument panel was thinned and drilled out, so I could use the kit provided “fixed six” instrument acetate, the whole cockpit (seat included) was painted black - not grey as the kit instructions would have it! The fuselage halves were closed up minus the “power egg” (engine). This made for ease of painting and a place to stick a “handle”.  

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The RATOG units’ lower rockets (parts D3) were found to have a noticeable oval cross-section, so these were replaced with round rod of appropriate diameter.

The 20+ parts that make up the wings were assembled at this point, remembering to open holes for the RATOG units and centre line bomb rack, and close holes for the two inboard sets of rockets on each wing. The drop tanks were modified by removing the oversize flange/fairing around the middle, and attached to strengthen the main wing fold hinge joint. For any of the aircraft depicted on the decal sheet, if folding the main wings, do not fold the wingtips. All of the aircraft depicted had the automatic wing tip fold removed (they could still be folded manually, but very rarely were). I chose to raise the Fowler flaps, so deleted the inner flap actuator arm pieces (A12 and A13) and removed the actuator arms from the outer fairings (D21). The flaps tucked away nicely. If using the drop tanks with the rockets, the rockets immediately outboard of the tanks should be changed to a single weapon to allow tank clearance (as depicted on the box-cover artwork). The outboard cannon fairings were also a little too oval so were drilled out and replaced with lengths of shaped sprue.

With the fuselage closed up and the wings assembled, the one thing I needed to do before attaching the wings was to hollow out the exhausts. The kit parts were thinned using the trusty Dremel and sandpaper, and then the openings marked on the fuselage halves. These were opened using the Dremel as well, and then once the exhausts were attached, their internal openings faired into the fuselage holes using Tamiya putty. The last thing was to add some black-painted card inside to prevent a see through look.

The wings were added, and a little dab of Mr Surfacer was all that was required along the joint. Final assembly before paint was to glue and mask the canopy/windshield, and attach all gear doors, hook and tailplanes. Wingtip lights had the bulbs drilled out and the resulting depression filled with Gunze tinted clear colours. These were added to the wingtips and masked along with the the port camera window. The engine assembly was modified so it, along with the rockets, bomb, RATOG units, gear legs/wheels, and finlets could be fitted as the very last steps of assembly.

Painting of this model was, for want of a better term, “arse about face”, and all painting was done using Gunze Sangyo acrylics. The whole model was pre-shaded black, and the areas of the wings and fuselage where the Musketeer stripes went was painted solid black. Once this had all had 24 hours to dry, the black areas of the stripes were masked and the yellow painted.

This was left for 2 days, and then the whole invasion stripe areas masked before the tops of the wings, tailplanes and fuselage were painted EDSG (H331). When the uppers were dry, they were masked and the lower Sky (H74) areas were painted. Finlets were painted white, and then the diagonal stripes masked, being careful to get their orientation right. Spinners and finlets were painted Russet (H33), which seemed to be a good Maroon to me. A couple of colour points, the interior of the wheel wells were painted Sky, not Silver as stated by the instructions, and the inside faces of the finlets on the 830 Sqn Wyvern depicted were also Sky, not Maroon. Always check your references…

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Final painting was the stores, gear, propeller tips and blades and the exhausts. While the prop blades were masked off to paint black, I also took the opportunity to mask and paint the missing anit-glare panel in front of the windshield. The model was coated with Polly S gloss varnish and then left to dry for 3 days before decaling. Kit decals were used, though some had to be modified, omitted or added to fix some problems. The underwing serials had to be cut to a ‘\’ and a ‘7’ to represent the ends of the serials where the invasions stripes passed over them. Decal 26 read terribly (“PINS MUST ALIGN FOR WITHSEAWAL”) so was carefully modified with a scalpel to correct it to WITHDRAWAL. Decals 30 (“DO NO STOP HERE”?!) were not present on the aircraft so were left off, as were the 4 “SLING HERE” decals (23) on the fuselage. There are actually a few decals included on the decal sheet which are not mentioned, but should be used. A half dozen “TRESTLE HERE” stencils were added under the wings, along with 8 propeller logos included on the sheet but not mentioned.

A point of note – the large numbers on the nose (decals 18) were only added AFTER Operation Musketeer was over, as these were originally positioned on the fuselage where the invasion stripes were, and hence were covered by the stripes during operations. So if modelling the aircraft during the operations, leave these decals off. The wing walkway markings (decals 24) have rounded corners, but should be square, so some spare decal and a scalpel soon corrected that. I note that the MonoChrome boxing (same kit, different brand, but the original pattern/mold maker) wing roundels are too small in diameter. The final change to the decals was to print out using the ALPS , and apply, the aircraft number in white on a black square on the wing leading edge.

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The model was glossed, weathered and then given a satin coat, as these aircraft were glossy in real life. Finlets, landing gear, stores and RATOG were attached. Finally the engine had some 5 minute Araldite applied and was inserted into the front of the fuselage. The three recognition lights under the fuselage had some of the Araldite tinted and added. The last thing left to do was remove the masking from all clear parts, completing a very enjoyable build.

Reference

  • Westland Wyvern

    Post-War Wings Line
    Michal Ovcacik, Karel Susa
    4+ Publications
    ISBN 80-902559-9-X

Craig

Photos and text © by Craig Sargent