CMR 1/72 Avro York C.1 RAF in Berlin Airlift By Jim Schubert

Introduction

The main history of the Avro York transport was covered in the review of the first release of this kit in the August 2005 issue. The York’s finest hour was, undoubtedly, during the Berlin Airlift from June 1948 through the end of the Soviet blockade on May 12, 1949. In that time 35 RAF Yorks and four chartered from Skyways of London carried ten-ton payloads on 13,180 sorties into Berlin from the British sector of occupied Germany. These loads amounted to 61% of all the tonnage carried into Berlin by British operations. It is to commemorate those operations that Czech Master Resin has released this special edition of their kit. The decals, therefore, provide markings for ten different RAF planes assigned to that historic operation. All were in natural aluminum finish. I continue to hope that CMR will see fit to make a future release of this kit with markings for post war civil Yorks.

Did you know that the RAF also used Short Sunderland flying boats on the Berlin Airlift?

The Kit

As before the kit is packed into in a very big, stout box, atop which is a computer-rendered profile by Jan Mach. Although this is a conversion kit it has the parts count and complexity of a full kit. A conversion kit is very appropriate for this subject as the actual York was itself a conversion from the Lancaster bomber. It’s a big kit! The 13” (375mm) fuselage is 1 ¾” (44mm) longer than the donor Lancaster’s. CMR says that this issue is intended for use with the Airfix, Hasegawa and new Revell Lancaster kits; the first issue was suggested only for the Airfix kit. The fuselage has been slightly revised in the wing mount area and the instructions have separate notes relating to the use of each of the three donor kits; very thorough indeed. The Matchbox Lancaster is, mercifully, not mentioned.

The kit gives you the very impressive fuselage, a fully detailed cockpit with lots of parts from the Eduard photo-etch set that is included, two optional fin/rudder assemblies, the central fin, an optional set of stabilizers/elevators, propellers, two optional propeller spinners, tires, separate inner/outer wheel hubs, an optional cargo door, new exhausts, control surface mass balances, two optional tailwheels, an RDF football and two very clear vac canopies. Altogether, there are about 90 parts in the kit; including a lot of individual windows. Apart from the cockpit, the detailing of which is superb, no interior detail is provided. That’s ok as you can’t see into the fuselage through those tiny round cast clear resin windows anyway. You should, however, insert sight-blocking bulkheads into the fuselage fore and aft of the wing and aft of the Cargo door outline to prevent unwanted interior sight lines. The clear vac canopy will permit a good view of the cockpit interior. An Eduard die-cut painting mask is included to ease the task of painting the framing on the cockpit canopy.

The 14 pages of instructional material include three pages on assembly, one on use of the masks, three on colors and markings and five of detail reference photos.

Conclusion

Do I like this kit? Yes, very much; more so, in fact, than the initial release. This special Berlin Airlift commemorative issue provides a complete, well-engineered conversion from any of the three 1/72 Lancaster kits in the current market.

But I’m still waiting for a release with post war civil markings.

My thanks to Czech Master Resin for providing the kit for this review.

References

• Profile No. 168 is, after all these years, still the best one-source reference on the York.

• The Airfix book on the Lancaster with its section on a York conversion.

• SAMI’s Modellers Datafile No.4; the Avro Lancaster, Manchester and Lincoln.

• Classic World War II Aircraft Cutaways by Bill Gunston.

• The internet.