ITALERI 1:72 MC.202 FOLGORE

 

Reviewer: Mark B (SMAKR Webmaster)  (smakr@bigpond.com)
Kit Built + Review Submitted:  December 2002

Kit Details:

Italeri Macchi MC202 Folgore 1:72 model kit No.1222

Aircraft History:

Three aircraft versions made up the Macchi 200 series that showed three very different aircraft types ranging from reasonable to arguably exceptional.  The first in the line the Macchi MC.200 Saetta was a low wing monoplane with a large engine cowling tacked onto the front of the nose and in earlier versions an open air cockpit and this aircraft was severely outdated in July 1943 when the Allies invaded Sicily.  Next came the MC.202 Folgore (Lightning) which was a much sleeker design which incorporated all the best features of the Saetta with a much better German engine.  Finally the MC.205 Veltro was am improvement again on the Folgore and arguably an exceptional fighter design that came too late in the war to have any impact.

The Folgore achieved a maximum speed of around 600 km/h which was roughly about the same as the Spitfire Mk.V when it was pitted against them in the North African campaign.  However, the type did not see action in the campaign for a number of months due to political delays which probably contributed to Allies maintaining their air supremacy during their offensives.  In Mid 1942 Folgores fought a campaign successfully with Luftwaffe aircraft against Desert Air Force Hurricanes and P-40's giving the Axis air supremacy until they were confronted by a growing number of Spitfires.  While this was happening, Folgores in Sicily were being engaged in air battles over merchant and naval convoys in and around Malta. Only a dozen or so Folgores were sent to the Eastern Front in 1942 and were among the best performing axis aircraft in the theatre at the time.

Around 180 Mc.202 Folgores were still serviceable when the Allies invaded Sicily and the type reputedly shot down some 33 Allied aircraft but most of the Folgores were lost when the air bases were bombed and only 53 remained airworthy when the Italian Armistice was signed.

The Kit:

Kevin Ronayne has written an excellent and comprehensive Inbox Review of this kit, so I will not reproduce all of that here.  But I will cover the basics which start off at the purchase price of this kit being $11AUD in the month preceding when this kit was built, which is an excellent price for any kit of this quality.  There are around 45 injection molded parts on two light grey (FS36375) coloured sprues, plus a clear sprue with two parts, all loose in the end-opening box.  The bottom of the box contains a couple of colour options with paint chips provided.

The quality of the mouldings is excellent, with very crisp parts, no flash, finely engraved panel lines and excellent surface detail.  The wheel well bays have some plumbing detail in the main wheel housing area which are boxed in the lower wing section in an unusual way, that from the interior of the wing, it is almost like the housing has been moulded by hand rather than machine.  Unfortunately for wheels-up modellers they are too shallow which means having half the exposed wheel in flight will require a lot of work/surgery later. 

The breakdown of the parts do suggest an MC.205 Veltro at a future date with separate hood, tailwheel assembly and under nose cowling sections provided (I am aware since writing this part that Italeri have indeed released an MC.205 - Ed).  For options, there are also two pairs of tailplanes provided and separate sand filter.  However, there are ejector pin marks in several "non-appreciated" places including the fuselage interiors right in the middle of the sidewall detail; main undercarriage (where the wheel sits); main wheel covers; gear door interiors; tailwheel housing halves; cockpit floor and the prominent oil filter interior - all of which will need removal. There is also a nasty sink mark on the - thankfully - interior side of the instrument panel.

Instructions:

Pretty much standard Italeri with a ten page fold out strip with three four-view diagrams of the versions that can be built out of the box, Italeri information and brief history of the aircraft on one side of the strip, in several different languages.  The other side features some basic model/flash service information, sprue diagram, paint labels A to F from FS Number and Modelmaster quotations and the six step assembly process which is easy to follow.

Construction:

The first stage of construction for me was to brush paint a number of parts up ready for assembly from the sprue, which included wheels, main wheel bays, cockpit, oil filter and so forth; all following the information provided in the instructions.  The interior of the main wheel bay and oil filter were painted silver along with the rudder pedals in the cockpit.  The plumbing detail (which will be later hidden by the wheel) was painted black, as was oil filter grills; propeller and seat.  The instructions say to paint the propeller silver but I was not convinced; one thing all the artist impressions I had in my reference library agreed with was black propellers with yellow tips.  The photos I have, albeit black and white, certainly suggest the blades were a dark colour, so I went with my instincts on this one.  The cockpit was painted in Humbrol 127 which is effectively the same colour as the sprues.  

For a run of the mill mainstream kit the cockpit detail is quite excellent, except for the ugly ejector pin marks on the fuselage halves interior, which all but ruins the sidewall detail provided.  There is an instrument panel with two decals provided (there is no detail on the plastic itself); seat with harness detail; cockpit floor with rudder pedals, plumbing (?) and texture detail; and a control column.  These fit superbly together and are easily installed into the fuselage half.  At the same time the propeller is assembled ready for trapping between the nose section.  The front of the cowling was given two coats of Insignia Yellow, as was the spinner, and propeller tips. It's a good idea checking that the propeller assembly will fit into the groove in the nose before the stopper at the end of the propeller shaft dries, otherwise you may find the gap is not long enough and it won't fit - and you need a flush nose fit for later installation of the upper fuselage and under fuselage panels (parts 12B & 21B) .  There is also a head rest painted black with a small locating pin on the back, and like the instrument panel (which also has a locating tab on the back), take the time to position it precisely because the fit of the fuselage halves will be superb if you do.  No filler or even any clamps were needed.

The tailplanes were added and I used the larger of the two alternatives provided, the instructions do not tell you which version either supplied is supposed to be for, they fit well, you just need a jig or hold the plane on its side just until the glue grabs so the tailplanes don't droop down.  The upper cowling is fitted into the cavity in the upper forward fuselage section and is a little tricky to install, but once you can get it to sit where it is supposed to, the fit is excellent.  Similarly, the lower cowling panel fitted under the nose required careful placement but fits well also once in.  Both cowling panels are obviously there to differentiate from the MC.205 Veltro, and are quite tricky to put in.  It's unclear from the instructions whether this panel goes in before the main wing assembly, but I decided on this approach which seems more conventional to me.

The main wings are broken into a single underwing piece and two upper halves.  I masked the wings in place and fitted underneath the fuselage cavity to test fit on whether there would be a slight vertical step at the wing-fuselage join, and there was.  Don't forget to drill a small hole for the intake filter which is added inside the radiator later, remembering only a very small hole is needed for the locating pin.  I therefore glued in the underwing piece and added the upper halves on afterward.  Again, fit is quite good, but a very small amount of filler was needed at the rear join under the fuselage and to the leading edges near the root. 

The oil cooler intake was added under the nose, and note the way that it is supposed to go according to the instruction sheet and checked against reference material.  Precise positioning is one that the modeller needs to determine as there is no outline on the model to assist with placement, but a dotted line inside the intake on the instruction sheet helps to place it correctly.  

The radiator has a couple of sets of grill plates to add in, but a small ejector pin mark will impede a flush fit for the front radiator grill.  The interior was painted silver and the grills black as instructed.  It's strongly recommended to test fit the grill plates first before affixing in place, it is easy to install them upside down, and the fit is excellent if installing the correct way.  

Colour Schemes:

Three examples can be built from the box, one with spinach blotch camouflage, and the other two with the spinach ring design as shown on the boxart.  All versions effectively have the FS 34097 'Spinach' Field Green on FS 33531 Sand upper surfaces, with FS 36375 lower surfaces, which translates into Humbrols 105 (Matt Marine Green); 121 (Pale Stone) and 127 (Light Ghost Grey) respectively.  I thought the Pale Stone was too light as the pictures I have tend to show a darker shade of sand, so you might want to further consult your references here (and something which Kevin spotted in his inbox review).  Both the spinach ring designs have the camouflage wrapped around the rear and forward fuselage sections.  One is from 374 Sqn; while the other is from 85A Sqn, 3° Stormo.  In 1/72 I considered the ring camouflage too much of a challenge so I opted for the more mottle-like effect which includes white triangle wing leading edges and extended yellow from the spinner to the forward cowling section.  This example is from 356A Sqn, 21° Stormo.  I should have also painted the fuselage yellow where the band was going to go, and the wing leading edges white for the triangular decals, and then applied those decals, masked and painted the camouflage around them - as you will read in the next section. 

Decals:

The decal sheet reflects that the aircraft had effectively no stencilling, providing only unit insignia, roundels, serials, codes and the various badges - a scanned image of the decal sheet is provided in Kevin's Inbox review.  The sheet is small and is divided into four sections, with one catering for decals pretty much common to all three versions, and the other three sections divided for a version each with serials and fuselage codes.  As is often the case with recent Italeri decals, these are thin and are of excellent quality with sharp register and so forth.  They bed down nicely on a gloss coated surface and the carrier film is pretty well invisible.  However, there are a couple of gripes.  Because they are so thin, anything painted underneath is very easily seen, with the camouflage coming through the almost transparent white wing leading edge decals.  My suggestion per the above paragraph would be to paint the decal colour (eg: white for these triangles and the tail fin cross, and yellow for the fuselage band) then apply the decal and then mask it off so you can paint around it, that way no see through effect.  The other small gripe would be size of the fuselage number.  The instructions and boxart (see bottom box image above) would have you believe the 56 part of the 356 1 would be on the fuselage band, with the white 1 and black 3 outside the band, but on the model, the whole 356 basically is the same width as the fuselage band.  Other than that the decals would have been excellent.

Accuracy:

I've included an addendum below kindly sent from Marjan Urekar from an Italian modeller with a number of inaccuracies he picked up.  I don't hold exactly the same observations in my assessment, and think that those who aren't absolute sticklers for accuracy will be pretty happy with the overall result.  I have a set of 48th scale plans (can't say where from since they are loose, but they are high quality photocopies) which I compared the Italeri model to.  

The very rear point of the aircraft (tail cone) is slightly tapered upward, but simply ends straight on the kit. The tailfin to fuselage area is also incorrect on the kit, while the fuselage spine behind the cockpit fairing should be a touch rounded. The revised (for production model) tailwheel fairing is incorrectly shaped and the tailwheel itself does not even match photos.  The oil cooler is wrongly shaped - on the model it has straight sides whereas on the real aircraft it should have slightly rounded sides, and from side-on it sits flat along the underside of the model whereas there is a distinctive rounded section on the lower cowl. The rear of the radiator is also incorrectly shaped. In being quite critical one can also say that the sand filter, while it looks nice, is not accurate when compared to reference photos, appearing more fatter and longer.  Finally, not sure if it is an error of the kit or not, which I mentioned in the construction above, but haven't been able to locate photos to verify it either way, and that is the gap behind the main canopy where it is wider than the upper fuselage fairing.  I would have thought this would be enclosed?!  In terms of measurements, I concur with the addendum below being a couple of millimetres under scale.

If you are a stickler for accuracy then the number of flaws will be annoying, and probably get you to head for the Hasegawa kit.  However, the profile for all intents and purposes still is a convincing replica of the Folgore.

Comparisons with Hasegawa:

I have not seen nor built the Hasegawa kit so I will not say either way whether one kit (Italeri or Hasegawa) is better than the other from a personal judgement.  During my time building this kit a number of other modellers contacted me to see how this Italeri Folgore project was going along and either asked for, or provided, opinions about which kit is better.  Fairly overwhelming that Hasegawa appears to be the more accurate and better kit.  But then one must weigh up the accuracy comments above - can you live with them, the fact there is more detail in the Italeri kit and the high likelihood you will find it for two-thirds (or even half) the price of Hasegawa and you could easily put a case forward that Italeri is better!  

In giving a case for Italeri being better, another modeller said that the Hasegawa kit had crisp mouldings but the least detail; virtually no cockpit detail; and only rudimentary wheel wells.  The Italeri kit had more detail, especially in the cockpit and wheel wells but was riddled with ejector pin marks that required removing.

Overall Recommendation:

This is probably a good case of having high expectations of a kit, and when it doesn't quite get there, you feel a bit let down.  The many but minor flaws in its accuracy are probably only going to make the real stickler turn elsewhere, and the complex fit of a couple of components made the kit a little tricky, even though a flush fit was achieved.  If you have high expectations like I did, then you may be disappointed, but if you are looking for a value for money, decent fitting, solid and convincing replica then Italeri have done a fine job here and I will certainly still highly recommend it on this basis.  

Addendum on Accuracy (my thanks to Marjan Urekar who sent in the following from an Italian modeller):

 

Related INBOX Reviews:-

SMAKR Home  |  What's New  |  Submissions  | Information Requests |  News  |  Links  |  Reference Corner  |  Site Info 
1/72 Reviews  |  1/48 Reviews  |  INBOX Reviews