Accurate Miniatures 1/48 Yakovlev Yak-1

ACCURATE MINIATURES 1:48 YAK-1

Reviewer: Gavin Reed (rec.models.scale)
Kit Review submitted: 3 January 2002

Aircraft:
Lilya Litvyak reached somewhat of a legend status by virtue of being a woman and becoming an ace for the Russian Air Force. The Allies, and Japan for that matter, refused to allow women to fly aircraft into combat because they supposedly couldn't handle the stress of combat situations, and were thus only allowed to ferry aircraft between theatres of operation. But the VVS employed women pilots in the 286 IAP, 586 IAP (Fighter Divisions) amongst others, and many racked up impressive tallies against superior German aircraft.

Lilya Litvyak was known as the "White Rose of Stalingrad" due to the white lily, generally wrongly thought to be a rose, she painted on the side of her cockpit because of her name, and much of her legend status has to do with being a very beautiful woman in a combat aircraft than sometimes even her final kill tallies. It was said that she was a big fan of roses and often carried postcards and other reminders in her cockpit with her on missions. She started in the all-female fighter divisions early in her career but due to her skill was soon allowed to fly in all-male fighter divisions soon after. Her first kills were scored in one of these units, equipped with the Lavochkin La-5.

She then moved onto all-female units again and started flying the Yak-1 which became her signature aircraft in the sky and the Luftwaffe came to respect her flying skills and often avoided dogfights if at all possible. During periods of intense air combat in the early months of 1943 she was wounded on a number of occasions and unfortunately this was to be her final year in the air. Perhaps the most famous incident was when she was ambushed by Bf-109's escorting Ju-88 bombers, of which she shot down two, while getting shot down herself but safely landed at base before passing out and being taken to hospital. On another occasion in mid-1943 she was shot down over German-occupied territory but evaded capture and was rescued by another fighter pilot a few days later. She finally met her match on 1 August 1943, while she herself was escorting other aircraft, which happened to be Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik's, and was shot down at the young age of 22 after racking up more than a dozen kills. Legend has it that some 8 Bf-109's were needed to shoot her Yak-1B fighter down although many will argue this is probably exaggerated to beef up her status - but she and her aircraft were missing for more than a quarter of a decade before her body was finally recovered in 1979 pinned underneath her aircraft speculating she may have survived the impact. Not surprisingly after an official ceremony in 1990, she was awarded the Gold Star Hero of the Soviet Union by Mikhail Gorbachov, and still remains the only woman fighter pilot to have ever received a comparable honour.

The Kit & Instructions:
Opening up the box you will find the four sprues of dark grey injection mold parts bagged separately to the decals and clear parts, and also separated by a further box lid that has a painting chart on its interior. This is truly a company that looks after model kits it manufacturers. On the bottom of the box there is a photo of a completed model and this is a great accompaniment for the rather large instruction booklet. Since Lilya Litvyak is the main focus of both the kit and this review it was refreshing to find a fair bit of historical information provided in with the instructions with a couple of her photos, although not much about her service in the VVS is actually discussed. In addition to the six assembly steps, which are provided in concise and well sketched exploded views, there are small "check boxes" allowing you to tick off each stage as the instructions dictate. If you do not follow the instructions sequence then these boxes will aid in knowing what you have done etc. However, even as I waded through the construction process it soon became clear that you should follow AM's logical sequence as some steps later rely on former sub-assemblies to fit and be completed properly. For painting you can rely on FS numbers and some generic conversion types. Back to the parts for a moment, they are molded very well, nice and crisp, no flash and engraved panel lines with superb surface detail provided. The clear parts are excellent and look great on the finished model.

Preamble to Construction:
So this is Accurate Miniatures for you :- a very well detailed kit in the box but apparently not one for anyone other than a well versed modeller. These kits are supposed to be at the extreme top of the range with infinite detail and precision manufacturing allowing parts to fit in perfect unison. So, why is there all this hype that the kit should not be tackled by a beginner? Well, these kits are generally so good and so complex that they just blow the novice away and you will need at least intermediate, if not better, skills to get through a project such as this one. The Yak-1 is actually a rather small aircraft but there are heaps of parts to this kit, many of which are very small external and thus probably beyond the scope of the novice.

Construction:
This starts in the office and is exceptionally detailed by the kit with most dials, gadgets and accessories provided in some form or other to keep even the most astute detailer happy (or unhappy depending on your view). The seat, consoles, tubular framing, floor and instrument panel are all separate parts and attach well inside the cockpit. The instrument panel is worth mentioning, it is molded in clear plastic giving off a 'glass-like' appearance and once you add the decal instrument face it looks very realistic. Seatbelts are also supplied on the decal sheet but are very thin and photo-etched spares is recommended. Humbrol 106 Ocean Grey mixed with 10% each 78 Interior Green and 33 Matt White was used as the interior colour. Black was applied to instrument faces, while handles and pilot accessories were picked out in the normal red and yellow. Gunmetal was applied to the gun breaches as well as the corresponding gunsight section.

Prior to putting the fuselage halves together, and having the benefit of reading a couple of other reviews on this kit, I drilled out the small holes in the engine cowling and fixed the oil cooler panel door in place, which can be positioned open or shut. This was a very small piece to deal with and easy to lose so have your wits about you! Once this was done the fuselage halves went together with the associated front plates added at the same time.

On goes the spine template that effectively discerns the Yak-1 from the Yak-1B and this needed a fair bit of test fitting to get a flush fit, resulting in a bit of sanding needed to blend it into the fuselage. The next part is the inner cockpit tub and main wing assemblies. This was actually a rather complicated and frustrating assembly needing plenty of patience to achieve a good result. The main problem is the anhedral and wing spar - the latter is very hard to fit into the underside recess and then glue in place, because of the curve shape of the fuselage - it just didn't match it. The only answer was to use superglue and then very carefully apply clamps and leave to dry, but be warned, if you do not clamp it correctly you will ruin the anhedral, plus the wheel wells are also set in the spar and this will complicate undercarriage assembly and alignment later. In contrast the upper wing halves fit well as do the rear stabilisers. The engineering of the kit makes it difficult to get these out of alignment!

The port wing requires an additional intake added to the leading edge wing root and this was perhaps the poorest part of the kit in terms of fit, plenty of test fitting and filling/sanding afterward to achieve a flush and smooth result. All the flaps come separate, thus allowing you to display them in whatever position you choose. The undercarriage was attached without a hitch even though I spent a great deal of time expecting some small parts to leap into the carpet void or performing some challenging sub assemblies due to the complexity attributable to the number of small bits, but to be truthful the undercarriage is rather a disappointment being more basic than the rest of the kit - in particular the oleo struts are small clumps of plastic. The landing gear doors were quite difficult to put into place and the instructions suggest to snip off the locating pins to fit flush, and after dry fit testing it was clear that this had to be done, although I am not happy with the end result as the fit was not quite flush.

The rest of the construction process was quite straight forward although the amount of small parts and external bits makes it a challenge. The cockpit canopy which can be displayed open fitted almost perfectly - but you should paint the part, whatever it is supposed to be (E70), before attaching the open canopy in place as you will not be able to get to it later.

Painting:
Choosing Lilya Litvyak's machine meant that the standard Black and Russian Olive Green [FS 34151] for the upper surfaces and Russian Blue [FS 25466] undersides camouflage scheme was applied. I found also that painting during construction (rather than at the conclusion) ensured an easier assembly of the rockets, landing lights etc later and would recommend it being done this way.

Versions & Decals:
Lilya Litvyak's plane is the subject of the kit and featured on the decal sheet with some stencilling [in russian!] in addition to the markings etc for her aircraft - except no white lily for the cockpit! As already mentioned the decal sheet also caters for the instrument panel [with two sets of panels supplied, including reverse facing dials for placing face down on the rear of the panel] and seatbelts. The decals have excellent register and went on very well with the assistance of the Microset/sol. I only had one complaint and that was the red stars were closer to the Yellow "44" code than what was indicated in the kit. According to some of my reference sources there is also a suggestion that the aircraft wore black underwing stars outlined in red, where as the kit supplies red outlined in black, which is what I used as red can sometimes appear as dark as black in B&W photos and I am not sure how correct this information is.

Accuracy:
This miniature is as accurate as I can determine in this scale, it measures almost perfectly and looks a convincing replica in almost every aspect. Providing you follow the kit's instructions and achieve a conclusion that the manufacturer intended then it's difficult to even find a flaw in the finished project, other than what the modeller has done!

Overall:
The kit is so well engineered and detailed that it actually puts it out of the league of the novice modeller although anyone with intermediate skills, who follows the instructions to a tee, should be able to produce a fine achievement. This kit is worth all the hype that seems to be placed upon Accurate Miniatures - it is well engineered and accurate. This is by far one of the best kits I have built in 1:48 and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in this subject. The only downside is that the sheet components of assembly can become a little complex and you need to be patient and motivated to get through the whole project. Stay focussed and you will be well rewarded! And remember there are heaps of small parts to contend with. Highly recommended!

References:
Soviet Airpower - publication
Soviet fighters of WW2
Flying Colors
VVS Modelling Website

Related Reviews:-

Accurate Miniatures 1/48 Yak-1 (Stephane Marignac)
Amodel 1/72 Yak-1 Early Series

web hosting • domain names
web design • online games