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REVELL (MATCHBOX) 1:72 FAIREY SWORDFISH MK.I/III |
Reviewer:
Kevin Ronayne (kevin.ronayne@nuigalway.ie)
Kit Review submitted:
10 April 2004
The cover artwork with the Bismarck in the background. The Bismarck angle is presumably the main reason why Revell Germany chose to re-release this old Matchbox kit.
Date: 8th April, 2004
The first prototype Swordfish flew in 1934, meeting an Air Ministry requirement for a carrier-based torpedo/scout aircraft. However, its origins actually lay in the private venture T.S.R. I biplane designed by Fairey the previous year. Fairey simply revised the design to meet Specification S.15/33, and the new aircraft was originally the Fairey T.S.R. II. From the outset, the specification was to include a floatplane configuration. The first contract for 86 aircraft was issued in April 1935, by which time the name Swordfish had been assigned. In terms of construction, the Swordfish had a metal-framed structure with fabric covering, and remained a basically simple aircraft throughout its long service career.
The full story of the Swordfish is obviously very long and detailed, and here is not the place to begin discussing it. Some 2,391 examples were built before production ceased in 1944, with Blackburn building some 1,699 and the rest by Fairey themselves. Although obsolescent even before the outbreak of the Second World War, the Swordfish managed to outlive the Fairey Albacore that was designed as its replacement. Despite its simplicity and appearance, the Swordfish proved capable of carrying out a wide variety of tasks. The nickname 'Stringbag' came from its ability to carry just about any conceivable load. It was also an extremely tough aircraft, capable of sustaining enormous damage in battle, and operating from carrier decks in extreme weather conditions that would have impossible for any other aircraft of the time.
In the early part of the war, the Swordfish was employed in the roles that it had been designed for, namely as a torpedo bomber and spotter/reconnaissance aircraft. As a torpedo bomber, it is remembered for three famous actions. The first two were the attack on Taranto and the Bismarck attacks, and these are described in more detail below. The third action was the near-suicidal attack on the German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisneau and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen during the famous 'Channel Dash' in 1942. All six attacking Swordfish were shot down, although five of the eighteen airmen were rescued. Although the Swordfish's slow speed - less than 140mph - made it increasingly unsuitable for such attacks, it also made it an ideal aircraft for anti-submarine warfare (ASW). From its early days, the Swordfish had been able to carry various bomb loads as an alternative to a torpedo. In the ASW role, it could now carry depth charges and mines. The Mk. II variant was developed with strengthened wings to allow under wing rockets to be carried - in the Fleet Air Arm (FAA), the Swordfish was a pioneer in this respect. The Mk. III was fitted with an under fuselage radome housing an air-to-surface radar. Swordfish were credited with the destruction of 22.5 U-Boats. This may not seem like much, but the true value of the Swordfish was its ability to operate from the small escort carriers that sailed with many convoys from 1943 onwards. Half the battle for a convoy escort was to fight off U-Boat attacks, or to discourage them in the first place. This is the capability that the Swordfish helped to provide.
Above all else, the Swordfish will always be associated with two actions - the attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto, and the attack that crippled the Bismarck. The Taranto attack was carried out by a force of 21 Swordfish that attacked in two waves on the night of November 11/12 1940 - for the operation, all Swordfish were operated from H.M.S. Illustrious. The Italians were aware of the incoming attack, detecting the lumbering Swordfish at a considerable distance using sound monitoring equipment. The harbour also had a formidable defence consisting of anti-aircraft batteries, searchlights and barrage balloons. Despite this, the attack was a spectacular success. Three battleships were hit; two were out of service for six months, and the Conte de Cavour was never brought back into service. A cruiser and two destroyers were also damaged and two auxiliary vessels sunk. Perhaps most importantly of all, the Italian fleet was forced to withdraw to more northerly ports where it could have less influence on the Mediterranean theatre. All of this cost just two aircraft. The Taranto attack was also a major influence on Japanese Naval planners, who would repeat the attack on a much larger scale at Pearl Harbour.
The attacks on the Bismarck were carried out in dramatically different circumstances. Not only was the target a capital ship at sea, but the North Atlantic weather was so bad that it was a near miracle that the Swordfish could even take off from and land on their aircraft carriers. After the sinking of H.M.S. Hood with almost all hands on May 24th in the Denmark Straits, the British deployed all possible resources to sink the German battleship. A first attack by Swordfish from H.M.S. Victorious on May 25th only registered one torpedo hit amidships, and did not cause any critical damage. Next came H.M.S Ark Royal. Her first strike on May 26th nearly ended in disaster when the cruiser H.M.S. Sheffield was attacked by mistake. Luckily, the magnetic pistols caused several torpedoes to explode either on contact with the water or in the cruiser's wake. This, and expert handling of the Sheffield, meant that she survived the attack unharmed.
The Swordfish were recovered and quickly rearmed with torpedoes which were now fitted with contact pistols after the lessons of the Sheffield attack, which had turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The force of 15 aircraft faced fierce anti-aircraft fire, but just as with the Victorious strike, the German gunners apparently had difficulty with the slow-moving biplanes. They often allowed too much deflection, meaning that they overestimated the speed of their targets and aimed too far ahead. Even so, the attacking aircraft still absorbed a tremendous amount damage from flak, but pressed home their attack, scoring two hits. The first was another hit amidships which again caused little damage, but the second was the fateful hit near the stern which wrecked the steering gear and jammed the rudders. Although this has been often called a 'lucky' hit, some writers have also commented that the Bismarck was not properly protected around the steering compartment and other critical areas. Just as with the Victorious force, all the aircraft in this strike somehow returned to their carrier, although some Swordfish were promptly written off. On the morning of the 27th of May, the Bismarck was engaged by Royal Navy forces headed by the battleships H.M.S. King George V and Rodney, and after a fierce gunnery duel was sunk (or possibly scuttled), with the loss of all but 100 or so men out of crew of over 2,000.
Matchbox kits were my 'staple diet' in the late 1970's and early 1980's, and the Swordfish was just one of many multi-coloured kits that I built in that time. When Revell released this kit in early 2003, I had no illusions about what I would find inside the box. Revell's pricing often reflects the source of the mold. Hasegawa = high price; Matchbox = low price. At just 6 Euro (about STG £ 3.50), I couldn't pass up the chance to build this kit again, no matter how crude I remembered it being. The box is small (as befits a kit in this price range), and barely big enough to hold the three main sprues. The main sprues are molded in the same very light grey colour used for the (ex-Matchbox) Victor sprues. There is also a tiny transparency sprue with the pilot's windscreen. The kit has 66 parts in total. I'm sure the sprues were bagged when I bought the kit. The mold is in reasonably good shape, with little or no 'flash' and not too much mold seam. Most of the surface detailing represents the mainly fabric-covered structure of the Swordfish, so the infamous Matchbox 'trench lines' are to be found only around the forward fuselage.
The old Matchbox artwork depicting the attack on Taranto. Anyone old enough to have built some Matchbox kits in the 1970's or early 1980's will remember the 'background text' on the front cover that described what was being depicted in the artwork.
Parts and markings are provided for two subjects: the first is (naturally) one of the Ark Royal aircraft that attacked the Bismarck. This Mk.I is aircraft K8375 (2Q) of 810 Squadron, Fleet Air Arm. Would you be surprised if I told you that the Airfix kit also features the very same aircraft? No, I didn't think so! The second subject is a Swordfish Mk. III (NR995) of 838 Squadron, Fleet Air Arm. As depicted in this kit, this aircraft was based at Thorney Island in December 1944, and was configured as an anti-submarine aircraft with a radar installed under the fuselage and rockets under the wings. At this stage of the war, most Swordfish still in service were used in the anti-submarine role. According to the kit instructions, this aircraft was also used in Rocket-Assisted Take Off (RATO) experiments. Unfortunately, the instructions give no clue as to what the RATO equipment would have looked like. The front page of the instructions includes a photo of a completed kit, but it has different markings and camouflage to either of the two subjects actually provided. This is not the first time that Revell has done this in recent years.
The instructions feature a construction guide that has been basically copied from the Matchbox instructions, with some of the original steps broken down into two or three steps in the Revell instructions, and in-place painting information added. If you had to rely on the Revell painting guide and nothing else, then working out the correct camouflage colours would be extremely difficult. Thankfully, there are plenty of other resources available, and I will discuss these later on.
The cockpit is probably the poorest of any kit that I have built in my time as a SMAKR reviewer. There are no instrument panels, no control sticks and (God forbid!) no sidewall detail. There are just two floor sections which are really just platforms to support two very basic seats, and two pilot figures which I threw straight into the spares box. The kit represents an aircraft with the middle station faired over. This is a problem if you are building the Ark Royal aircraft, because apparently all the aircraft that attacked the Bismarck had three-man crews. The rear Lewis machine gun is the best piece in the cockpit assembly. The interior of the cockpit was painted almost entirely Hu 78 RAF interior green, except for the black front instrument panel that I scratchbuilt. This done, I cemented the fuselage halves together, and the fit was excellent. Make sure to paint the framing of the pilot's windscreen at this point if you haven't done so already, as it is quite tricky to do this after the wings have been attached (which is what happened to me). Next, I added the parasol struts. In the Matchbox tradition, the parasol unit is molded in two halves, each of which has part of the upper fuselage as its base, which makes construction very easy.
The engine assembly is also of better quality than the kit generally. It consists of seven parts, including a two-part engine block, starboard-side exhaust and front and rear cowling sections. The front cowling ring and the exhaust were painted in a mixture of red and gunmetal - this is one of those areas where it's really a matter of individual taste or preference. I decided to leave the completed engine block (including propeller) off the kit until the rest of the kit was not only complete but also painted.
The tail assembly was something of a nightmare. On paper, it looks quite easy, with a single-part tail/elevator that fits on top of the rear fuselage, over which the fin/rudder is positioned. The four support struts complete the sub-assembly. What I found very difficult was to get everything to line up at the correct angles. This is always an extremely important step for me, as I always try to get the fin and tail units absolutely correct before attaching the main wings. One of the strange things that happen whenever I do this is that when you check the angles from the front and the rear, you can get seemingly different readings. Eventually, I got it right, but I had to slightly trim some of the support struts.
The main wings are broken down into ten parts: the upper centre (parasol) section and the upper and lower left and right wings, each of which is in two parts. Compare this to the Airfix kit, which has just single upper and lower wings each with upper and lower halves. Apart from the parasol struts, there are six main wing struts - the four pairs of main tandem interwing struts are each molded as single units, and then there are the two struts connecting the upper and lower ailerons. Although the parts were all a little crude, it all went together with comparative ease. I assembled the full upper wing first and let it set - this has a slight 'inverted gull wing' effect. Then, I attached the four tandem struts to the underside of this unit. Because of the way in which these strut parts are designed, it easier to do this than attach them to the lower wings first, which is what the instruction say. I then took the assembled lower wings and basically put everything together as fast as possible, adding the aileron struts last of all. After a few minor adjustments, I left it all to set overnight. The worst part of this was the relatively loose fit of the lower wings to the fuselage. The two inverted 'v' struts (parts 27 and 28) that connect the fuselage and lower wings should not be put in place until that area of the kit is painted and decals 19 and 20 are applied over the wing roots.
The main undercarriage sub-assemblies were a little crude but caused no problems in construction. The main wheels should slope slightly outwards at the top. The last parts of the aircraft proper were the tail wheel and arrestor hook. Then it was time for the armament. The torpedo is very crude, especially the tail section - another reason why this is perhaps not the best kit to use if you want to model a Bismarck attacker. The parts for the antisubmarine variant are somewhat better. The radome should be positioned as far forward under the fuselage as is possible, with its forward edge just at the point where the fuselage begins to taper upwards. The under wing rocket racks are very simplistic but fit cleanly. The rockets should be positioned with the tail fins beyond the end of the rails, which is something that is clearly visible in old photographs. This is not made clear in the construction guide, but is shown in the painting/decal guide. At any rate, the tail fins are so thick that the rockets have to be attached in this way! The body of the rockets should probably be painted natural metal, but the warhead (and possibly the fins, based on some photographs), should be painted some other colour - possibly a shade of slate grey (e.g., Hu 31). It seems that every kit of a rocket-equipped RAF or FAA aircraft that I have has different instructions on how to paint the rockets.
I didn't bother to rig the model, even though good rigging instructions are provided. For some reason, I have a mental block about rigging, which probably dates back to the time I rigged the huge Airfix Handley-Page 0/400.
I don't know how accurate the Revell colours in the paint scheme are, because I don't really have access to Revell paints. Some of the colours suggested by Revell are mixes, which makes it even more difficult to work out how close to reality they would be. Revell stubbornly stick to their own paints, without any reference to other manufacturers or to historic colour standards - with the obvious of exception of RLM colours of course.
Speaking selfishly, none of this really matters to me, as I know the Humbrol colours required. For the torpedo bomber scheme, these are:
| Revell Paint Scheme Key |
Humbrol Colour |
Official Colour Description | Usage |
| A | 79 | Extra Dark Sea Grey | Fuselage and upper wing camouflage |
| B | 102 | Dark Slate Grey (actually green) | Fuselage and upper wing camouflage |
| C | 27 | Dark Sea Grey | Lower wing camouflage |
| D | 31 | Light Slate Grey (actually green) | Lower wing camouflage |
| N | 90 | Sky (aka Sky Type 'S') | Lower fuselage and undersides |
The different (lighter) camouflage colours on the lower wings represent the so-called "shadow shading" effect. The Humbrol colours that I have listed would not always be the best possible matches, but they are the best that you can get without resorting to mixing. For the record, both the RAF and Fleet Air Arm used "shadow shading", but the RAF used different colours both on the upper and lower surfaces - generally speaking, FAA colours were darker than RAF colours.
The Mk. III anti-submarine aircraft that I built had the same camouflage colours on all upper surfaces, i.e. Extra Dark Sea Grey and Dark Slate Grey (Hu 79/Hu 102). The undersides and most of the fuselage were painted white, which replaced Sky on FAA aircraft from 1943. The grimier and dirtier you can make this white finish, the better! A final point is that the two subjects in this kit have different camouflage patterns on the wings and fuselage. The Airfix and Revell painting guides are in broad agreement in this point. Obviously, the 1941 Bismarck attacker has the same camouflage pattern in both kits - I would be worried if that were not the case! However, the camouflage pattern of the 1944 Mk.III in this kit roughly matches that of the 1943 Mk. II subject in the Airfix kit. It would appear that there was not only a change in underside colour in 1943, but also in the basic camouflage pattern.
In keeping with the mediocre quality if the kit generally, the decal sheet is not one of Revell's best. Specifically, the two sets of fuselage roundels are both out of register, with the yellow outlines being off centre in both cases - this is especially true for the torpedo bomber subject. Time to raid the spares decal stash or use a third-party sheet!
Leaving that aside, the rest of the sheet is actually up to Revell's very high standards. It's just very unusual to find any significant production fault with a Revell decal sheet nowadays.
The good news is that the kit appears to be dimensionally accurate. I say 'appears' to be because while there is broad agreement on the wingspan (13.87m give or take a centimetre), the authorities quote two different lengths depending on whom you read. Some give 10.87m (again, give or take), but others give a figure of 11.07m. One set of web references gives a length of 10.4m! I can't understand why there are such different measurements - I don't think the fuselage length changed between versions, and the floatplane version would be far longer than any of these. Anyway, the figure of 10.87m is the most commonly quoted and the one used in what I would consider to be my best references. The kit is very close to this.
Apart from the basic dimensions, the wing planforms and head-on profiles also appear to be very accurate. The kinked profile (i.e., slight inverted gull-wing) of the upper wing is captured very well, as are the angles of the various struts. I had initially thought that the wings were a bit too thick, but the wings of the Swordfish really were thick. Whether the wing chords are correct is another matter that I can't comment on without better references. One point of concern is the undersurface of the lower wings. On the Mk.I, this was fabric-covered like most of the aircraft. However, from the Mk.II onwards, the lower undersurfaces were metal-skinned to help handle the increased stresses caused by the extra weights that the later versions could carry under the wings. I must admit that I have no idea as to whether or not the wing undersurface would look any different depending on which covering was used. Must do more research ...
Other minor issues include the fact that the original Bristol Pegasus IIIM engine (690 bhp) was replaced early in the Mk.II production run by the more powerful Pegasus XXX (750 bhp). Since the kit includes the same engine block for both the Mk. I and Mk. III subjects, one can only hope that the two versions of the engine looked very similar. Some little details are missing, such as the lower wing landing lights, and some entry steps on the back legs of the main undercarriage 'V' struts. Also missing is a small entry 'stirrup' for the observers on the port side of the fuselage, although the footholds on the fuselage itself are included. Most of the missing details could be easily added.
My initial assessment was that this was the worst kit of the Swordfish in this scale. By reputation alone, the MPM kit seems to be the clear winner (not to mention the most expensive by a long way!). The Airfix kit has superior cockpit detail to this kit, which says a lot as there isn't actually much detail in the Airfix kit. I have seen the Frog mold (probably the floatplane version in an Eastern Express boxing), and I seem to recall that it looked quite good. The Frog mold has been reboxed by a number of companies - as I write this review, the only boxing available from Hannants is torpedo bomber variant from Cooperativa. Just like this kit, it models both the Mk. I and III versions - the Airfix kit represents the Mk.I and II versions. Whatever concerns I have expressed about the wing undersurface and engine block would apply to the Frog and Airfix molds as well. Basically, either all three kits are right, or they are wrong. Note that neither the Airfix or MPM kits appear to be available right now, so the choice of Swordfish kits is actually quite limited.
© Kevin Ronayne 2005
With all this in mind, I don't think this kit is as bad as I believed it to be. If I were to build it again, I would consider scratch-building a properly detailed cockpit, and doing the rigging. The torpedo would also need to be modified or replaced. How I envy 1/48 scale modellers who have the wonderful (if outrageously expensive) Swordfish kits with exquisite cockpit detailing and a wide range of under wing stores. There is an Airwaves etched detail set for use with either this or the Airfix kit, but I don't know what it contains exactly.
As a final thought, now that Revell have re-released this kit, maybe they can see their way to re-releasing some of the other more sought-after Matchbox kits, such as the Wellesley, Seafox, Heyford and Privateer.
I have many texts on Air/Naval warfare, which is one of my favourite areas of history. I'm not going to bother listing which ones I used for my background information on the operational history of the Swordfish. However, one book that I have to mention is Pursuit - The Sinking of the Bismarck by Ludovic Kennedy. This book covers Bismarck's maiden and only voyage from her leaving port, to the destruction of the Hood to Bismarck's eventual sinking. It is one of the best (and best-written) books on military history that you could hope to read.
Apart from the indispensable IPMS Stockholm colour charts, I found a few useful Swordfish pages via Google, although they were mostly restating what I knew from my standard printed references. Some have some nice pictures included. Here are the pages in no particular order:
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