Oooooo….Barracuda! Special Hobby 1/48th Fairey Barracuda And Griffon detail set By Tom Gloeckle

Introduction

The Fairey Barracuda was a rather large, ugly torpedo bomber for the Royal Navy during WWII. Unfortunately, not a very good aircraft, and was relegated to secondary roles by the end of the war. It's biggest claim to fame was the involvement in the sinking of the German battleship Tirpitz. The Special Hobby kit is the first injection molded version of this unique airplane in 1/48th scale.

The kit consists of 75 parts molded in a thick plastic with fair recessed detail on the flying surfaces and fuselage. The smaller parts have little to no detail whatsoever, and the detail that does exist is poor. There are 12 clear parts that are, thankfully, injection molded as I wouldn't want to try and cut out that greenhouse canopy from vacuform plastic. Also in the kit are 23 resin parts that are mainly for the cockpit, but include a few other external detail parts that do not mold well in Special Hobby's plastic. Finally, a small fret of photo-etched parts for the seat harnesses; yagi array antennae, and radiator matrices for the engine air intake.

The Griffon detail set basically improves the weak areas of the Special Hobby kit. This involves a bewildering mass of photo-etched parts and some reasonably nice resin parts to improve the cockpit and main landing gear areas. There is also parts for bomb racks and torpedo racks that are missing in the Special Hobby kit. Other parts are provided for miscellaneous areas the kit is short of. There are some things about this detail set I find a very nice touch. As you read on, you will wonder what Griffon was thinking when they did some of the parts the way they did. So on to the build.

A note here, I have very little information as far as references go on the Barracuda. So, some of what I have done on this project maybe utterly wrong. For that, I give you my humble apologies. Some of the conjectures I make concerning the Barracuda again may be off base. And again I give you my humble apologies.

Cockpit

Actually, the first thing I constructed was the twin Vickers gun mount provided in the Griffon set. This replaces the .50 cal machine guns in the kit, which I think are inaccurate. This was the first warning that both the detail set and the kit earn the sobriquet Barracuda as they both had quite a bite. The Vickers were molded in two pieces. This I don't know what Griffon was thinking. The whole gun mount assembly was a fiddly little combination of small photo-etched to be folded, resin, and bits of plastic and wire. Ammo drum sit precariously on top of the breeches, and the whole thing fell apart at least once. I also ended up breaking the end of the barrel of one of the guns. This was never to be seen again. So, I replaced it with a brass barrel from a Vickers out of a Cutting Edge detail set for the Beaufighter. It looks better painted in gun metal than raw.

The next step in the process was the replacement resin part for the gunner's position. Griffon did a much better job of depicting this part as it is one piece, yet nicely detailed with ammo drums molded on top and some miscellaneous detail underneath. The whole thing does a reasonably good job of integrating with the rest of the kit cockpit. The swiveling guns mount for the twin Vickers needs to be added before things get too far along in the assembly process. I used a small piece of piano wire to connect the two parts as I thought it would otherwise be too fragile.

Before I added the cockpit to the kit I simulated internal structure with bits of stretched sprue in areas I thought structure might be. The rest of the cockpit was assembled utilizing kit parts; some detail was good, while others left something to be desired. The forward bulkhead for the radioman's position was a little flat in detail. Fortunately, even with all that glass it's hard to see. The whole cockpit was painted British interior green-gray, except for the harnesses, seat cushions and various other details. As a final note, leave the pilot's head rest off the seat until the canopy is glued in place. That part repeatedly broke off in handling.

The windows for the gunner's position were added at this time and painted over as this was something that was apparently done on the particular Barracuda that I was building. Well, at least that’s what it said to do on the instructions.

I also cut the area around the rear of the gunner's position. There was a panel on the actual aircraft that slid to the rear to allow free traversing of the guns, and small, rectangular panels that rise up with the gunner's canopy. The panels are represented in brass parts with the largest having to be curved to match the profile of the adjacent fuselage, and the smaller parts consisted of two parts that needed to be laminated. A fiddly process to be sure, and then added to the canopy and set aside for later. The larger would later be held in place on the fuselage with blue tack until final assembly.

Fuselage

Before closing up the fuselage, remember to add the air intake detail with the very nice photo-etched matrices. Griffon says to open a scribed rectangular area just aft of the air intake; this is for the air outlet that is provided by Griffon. This is a vast improvement for one of the simplified areas in the kit. Also I added the nicely cast exhaust at this time as it had to be added from within. Cut out the triangular areas that are the recesses in the fuselage for that rather odd landing gear as this area has no detail and Griffon provide some nicely detailed resin parts that fit well in place.

Fit of the fuselage was fair, typical of Special Hobby, and required a fair amount of putty and sanding to get blended. The plastic, as I discovered, was unyielding to re-scribing by either knife blade or scribing tool. So hard was the plastic that I had to resort to using a saw! I then cleaned these areas with fine sand paper and an old toothbrush. I then added the tail hook fairing, again a lot of sanding and puttying was required.

Griffon provides a multipart assembly that fits between the landing gear recesses on the belly. These parts consist of an egg crate insert covered by a rectangular part that follows the profile of the underside of the aircraft. This part has a large opening that exposes the insert underneath. For the life of me I just don't get what this assembly is supposed to represent, but it looks really good and is a nice replacement for the kit part. Though I think this may present some issues in the future.

Bomb Racks From Hell Pt 1

Bomb racks are not provided in the Special Hobby kit, however, Griffon thoughtfully makes up for this oversight. I use the term thoughtfully very loosely as this is probably the most perverse interpretation of model building I've ever seen. As can be seen from the provided photo, the rack is made up of parts that need to be laminated, and so do the shackles. What the hell are you thinking Griffon? I started using 5 minute epoxy to put these together thinking extra time would help to get everything aligned. Bad choice, it just made a nasty mess, I hate epoxy! I switched to gap filling super glue and found the racks too thick to allow the shackles to fit properly, which by the way, also had to be laminated. So, I left out a center section of the bomb rack and this allowed the shackles to fit properly. Come on Griffon, couldn't you have done this any other way? I made a bit of a mess of these things and by the sixth wing rack I frankly didn't care anymore. Just add plenty of Mr Surfacer, primer, finally paint and call it good.

Make sure that you drill the holes for the racks into the wings. The Griffon instructions are vague as to where they go, but I believe they go where a series of three small triangular squares are molded inboard of the wing. If you have a reference handy I'd suggest using it.

Wings

The first step I tackled in this phase of construction was the wing mounted landing light. The kit parts are thick and quite chunky looking, fortunately Griffon provide a replacement with the oddest of twists. This assemblage consists of a single piece backing that needs to be folded into three, a very tiny semicircular bracket for the light, and a disk that needs to formed into a dish. The dish is created by pressing this part into a block made of an unknown material with a small resin ball that was missing from my detail set. Why? This is the most absurd method I have ever seen. Why not just mold the part in resin? Is this some sort of strange Czech idea of modeling? Griffon, what were you thinking here? Anyway, I substituted a light unit that I had not used on the Tamiya 1/48th scale Irving night fighter. Thought that would fit, however, because of the thickness of the injection molded lens cover, the light needed to trimmed way back. A light frame part is supposed to fit over the light fixture, it didn’t, and I left it off. Not accurate, but my frustration level is beginning to grow.

The wheel well inserts from Griffon are a vast improvement over the parts provided in the kit. They are nicely detailed with just a little clean up in the lightening holes to improve them. Unfortunately, even with an extreme amount of thinning on the inside of the wings, the fit of the wells is problematic at best. Don't forget to thin the trailing edges of the wings.

The wing fit is fair and still required a fair amount of sanding and filling to look good. Fit to the fuselage is decent, but it's a butt joint that will require a solution to make strong as there is a lot of stress riding on this joint because of the landing gear assembly. I did this with several layers of thick laminated sheet plastic, cut to aerofoil shape, and glued to the fuselage in the wing root. After all that copious glue had dried, it was time for trial and error fitting of the wings. Once I was satisfied with the fit, the wings were glued into place.

I recommend that you leave the Fowler flaps and the bulged radioman's windows off until clean up is completed around the wings. That will make life easier, and actually, I left those windows off until very final construction. This made handling the model a little easier. Don't forget to add the little inspection windows at the leading edge of the wing near the root. Do that after sanding.

The landing light lens needed a bunch of sanding on the inside to get it to fit. I polished it, and then coated it in Future. When dry, added it to the wing, sanded the outside to flush up with wing, puttied it, sanded it and got sick of messing with it. I found this particular phase of construction unnecessarily complicated and tedious.

I then added the cheek air intakes with their attendant debris screens. These required some test fitting and puttying to look adequate. The horizontal stabilizers were next, which mercifully, fit with little or no problem. Leave the braces (parts D5) off until after painting. This thing was starting to look like the hulking brute of an airplane that it is.

Landing Gear Pt 1

The horizontal landing gear supports that Griffon provides look much better than that provided in the kit. However, the kit part is a single rigid structure that spans both sides of the fuselage. The Griffon parts are two separate pieces that glue into the central insert.
Ultimately, this may weaken the whole assembly, which could lead to gear failure with the tiniest provocation. It is also absolutely critical to make sure that they are level if the airplane is to stay level. I glued them in place and supported the wings with boxes. This allowed the horizontal gear supports to be placed as level possible with the flat surface the plane was on. The retraction arms that glue into the wheel well with no positive support. This seems like a house of cards waiting to fail. So far so good, but I'll be very careful moving it.

Bomb Racks From Hell Pt 2

Griffon gives the option of either adding centerline sway braces for a torpedo or an American 1600lb armored piercing bomb, neither of which is provided by Special Hobby. Griffon, however, provide the bomb, but not the torpedo. The braces for both weapons are again, laminated photo-etched parts. This time, the parts are bigger and a little easier to work with, but still, isn't there a better way? Griffon gives instruction as to where the braces mount under the fuselage, but they are a butt joint.

Step 11 in the Griffon set wants you to produce another part assembly that resembles a bomb rack. Question is, where does it go? The instruction doesn't show where it is located, so I resorted to emailing the owner of the company. The reply, as I expected, was in very broken English and confirmed that yes indeed it was a bomb rack. Still had no idea where to locate it on the model so didn't use it.

The bomb has a resin body and photo-etched fins that need to be folded. Before attaching the fins, a small circular detonating vain has to be mounted on a small length of .5mm wire or rod to rear of the bomb. Very tiny photo-etched mounting eyelets have to be added to the top of the bomb and a small photo-etched piece on the bottom. This last bit is a true test of manual dexterity and absolute patience, both of which I was running out of.

Canopy

The canopy comes in three sections, the pilot's canopy, the main canopy that extends back to the gunner’s position, and finally the gunner's canopy which lifts up. The assembly reminds me of the canopy used on the Kate Japanese torpedo bomber. I decided to try and make my life easier by masking the complicated green house style canopy before gluing it in place. Seemed like a good idea at the time, however, things don't always work out. It seems that because of the August heat in my modeling room, combined with the length of time the mask was left on equated to a disaster. There was quite a bit of residual adhesive left on the canopy. So I resorted to using Goo Gone to get rid of the adhesive. I applied it with a cotton swab, and fortunately, it didn't attack the plastic nor did it mess the paint up too bad. A little touching up and I was good to go.

Painting

The model was painted in the standard WWII Royal Navy camouflage using the new Aeromaster colors. First I completed masking with paper towel, cleaned the model with Polly Scale Plastic Prep, and primed it with Tamiya spray primer. I then pre-shaded with Testors acrylic flat black. I then used a method of weathering I learned that involves putting the base color on first. This is followed by two or three coats of the base mixed with white. This is applied in the center of the panels, and is followed by two or three very thin coats of the base color to blend it all in. I went into the panel lines on the underside with a mechanical pencil, and the topside with a diluted mixture of Tamiya semi-gloss black and red-brown. I then sprayed a very diluted version of the brown/black mix over the panel lines and built up color for the exhaust. I then added three coats of Future in preparation for the decals.

Decals

Decals are provided in the kit for three aircraft.

1. LS550 – 4A, 829 NAS aboard HMS Victorious (the plane I chose)

2. LS542- 5C, 829 NAS aboard HMS Victorious

3. PM954-R1C, 814 NAS aboard HMS Vengeance

The first two options are in Atlantic fleet markings, while the third is in Pacific markings.
The decals were probably the most pleasant part of this project as they settled down nicely with little or no solvent required. I do have some reservations about the colors of the markings. If the markings are supposed to pass for faded markings, then they work all right. Otherwise the colors just seem too pale to be correct. After the decals had set I applied a good coat of Testors acrylic flat coat seal things up followed by a little paint chipping with Prismacolor pencil.

Landing Gear Pt 2

The lower main gear legs were assembled utilizing the kit legs mated to the Griffon photo-etched gear door with mounting brackets. The doors needed to be curved, so I persuaded them to curve using the kit doors as formers. The brackets were fiddly, tedious little things that needed folding and persuading to mate to the gear legs. In an effort to make things a bit stronger, I cut off the plastic pin on the gear leg and drilled out the center to allow a brass rod to be added. I drilled the mounting point in the horizontal landing gear member to increase strength further, then added the gear assembly.

The outer gear doors from the Griffon set were used. These include photo-etched hinge parts need to be added along with a length piano wire. More fiddly work to be done, but the end is near.

Propeller

This rather chunky bit consists of a single four blade unit; thank god, a back plate, and a spinner. The blades had some substantial sink marks that needed filling. Fit was fair, and was followed with the spinner being painted sky with black blades and yellow tips. I held off gluing this until final assembly.

Final Assembly

The problem I ran into here is what parts to add in what order to keep from breaking anything off. I was at a point where just about anything on this model would go flying at the slightest provocation. My biggest fear was the photo-etched yagi array antennae located on the wings. I would leave these near last.

I added the tail wheel and arrestor hook next as they seemed robust enough to stand up to handling. I followed with the mounting of the horizontal stabilizer braces (part D5). These were painted and left to dry. I removed the sliding panel at the rear of the gunner’s position, cleaned out the Blue Tac that held it in place, and glued it to the open position. I then mounted the twin Vickers on its swivel arm, followed by the canopy in the open position. I finally tackled the delicate task of adding the yagi antennae, painted them, and with a final breath of pure relief the propeller was added.

Final Thoughts

After a three and a half month ordeal, I finally had something that looked like a Fairey Barracuda. What you first notice is that it is quite big and quite ugly. With the limited resources at hand it looks fairly accurate. The Griffon bits really helped, but was it worth it? Well, yes and no, the Griffon detail set sells for a staggering $80 plus when bought from Hanants. That seems to be the only source for the parts at retail that I have found. Add to that the $60 plus price tag for the Barracuda and you’ve got one big ugly expensive model. The model itself was fair, I found the plastic hard to work with and the fit was hit and miss. The decals were nice, but suspect in the colors. The Griffon set was maddeningly tedious to worth with. Laminating bomb racks is, frankly, a pointless waste of effort that could be used elsewhere on the kit. The instructions for the Griffon set were vague and rather microscopic to read. For this much money it could have been done better.

I would only recommend the kit and set to the most devoted fan of the Barracuda.

Thanks to Griffon for their update set.