Hawker Hurricane Mk.I Tropical. Airfix 1:48.

The ‘Hurrie’ ready for take off from Sidi Barani, Egypt, 1941.

The Hurricane was getting towards obsolescence by the start of WW2, but this tough, partly fabric covered aircraft played a crucial role in the early part of the war and went with the BEF to France in early 1940. We all remember the scene of them getting shot up at the start of the movie ‘Battle of Britain‘, shown elsewhere on my site.

Quite a bit of work went into the construction of this kit although most of it you can’t see as it’s inside the fuselage! Airfix have taken to adding a lot of interior details to their models of late, no bad thing in my opinion.

There were one or two oddities with this kit, one of which was having to cut out a sizeable piece of plastic under the nose.

I used my modelling saw to hack out the indicated piece
The removed piece. Why didn’t they just mould it that way!?
Some of the interior frames. There was an option to expose the breeches of the Browning machine guns, which is a nice touch, but having already done that on a previous Mk.I Hurricane, I elected to leave them covered. The paint scheme was going to be tricky enough!
Masking off the wings before spraying the aluminium leading edge
And underneath…
The Hurricane always looks like she means the business from head on. Overshadowed by the Supermarine Spitfire of course but still a lovely looking kite in my opinion and the vital work horse of the Battle of Britain. They were more numerous than the Spitfires, and being slower, were mainly tasked with attacking the Luftwaffe bombers.
Despite its fiddly nature, this scheme was irresistible. Flown by Sergeant Pilot F.H.Dean, No. 274 Squadron.
A fair bit of weathering-the trick is knowing when to stop!
Box
I read this short memoir by Roald Dahl during lockdown, which partly inspired me to make this model. As I recall, he joined the RAF in Kenya and trained in a Tiger Moth, then progressed to a Gladiator in Iraq and finally flew combat missions in the Western Desert and Greece. He crashed in Libya and for a time lost his sight. After recovering, he was sent on the futile mission to Greece where he took part in dog fights. He was forced to give up the service from a black out he suffered during an aerial duel if I remember correctly, probably as a result of his crash in the desert. It’s a great story.
In Greece
Later sent to Palestine