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Airfix 1/350 HMS Illustrious

By Chris Banyai-Riepl

History

The HMS Illustrious, affectionately known as Lusty to her crew, was the second of three Invincible Class aircraft carriers.  Originally envisioned as an ASW escort carrier, the advent of the Harrier saw it transform into a full-fledged aircraft carrier, complete with a ski jump flight deck.  The first ship, the HMS Invincible, was launched in 1977, while the Illustrious took to the water a year later.  The third, the HMS Ark Royal, was launched much later, in 1981.  The Illustrious remained in the shipyard for final fittings until June 1982, too late to join its sister in the Falklands.  The Lusty was deployed to Bosnia and Iraq in the 1990s and remains in service today.

The Kit

This is Airfix's first foray into the common ship scale of 1/350, and they have made quite a splash, so to speak.  This is an impressive model no matter which way you slice it, being both well detailed, sturdy in assembly, and relatively inexpensive.  This first release is the 'everything's in here' release, with paints, glue and brushes included in the box.  While the glue will probably be plenty, I wonder if the few cups of paint will be enough to cover the entire hull.  Likewise, someone attempting to brush paint this entire ship with the #4 Round brush will likely quit in frustration.  That said, the brushes look to be quite nice, and should work out well for quite a while.  The kit itself is molded in a light gray plastic and includes the hangar bay, detailed superstructure, and an air complement containing both aircraft and helicopters.

The 113-step instruction book starts with a bit of decision making on the modeler's part.  The kit comes with the option of having the elevators at varying levels, a nice touch that opens up lots of possibilities.  Once that decision is made, the rest of the hangar bay is assembled, with separate sides all around.  Additional bulkhead and wall pieces add further details around the edges, providing spots for the lifeboats and such.  This main lower deck piece is then sandwiched between the two side hull pieces, which is then completed with the one-piece lower hull and one-piece flight deck.

The superstructure is next, and this is made up of two sides for the majority of the island.  This results in a large seam right down the middle of the entire superstructure, but as most of the sides are flat, this should be simple to clean up.  Onto this main piece go lots of additional details, such as the eleven-piece bridge.  Various antennae and defensive weaponry detail out the superstructure, which fits onto a positive locator on the flight deck piece.

For the underside, the hull strakes are separate, as is the sonar dome.  On the rear of the hull, the propeller shafts are separate, as are the mounts.  The propellers are separate, with separate hubs.  The latter don't look quite right to me, being more of a can shape rather than a cone, but that said, I have not really looked for photos of the screws on Invincible Class carriers.  The rudders are also separate.

For the air complement, the kit comes with two Sea Harrier FA.2s and two Harrier GR.7/9s.  These are made up from right and left halves, a one piece wing, and a one piece tail insert.  For the helicopters, there are two Merlins and two Sea Kings.  For both types, these are split into right and left halves, with separate tail pieces.  There are two rotor options, folded and open, which allows the modeler to display the helicopters in either mode.  Also included is an aircraft recovery crane and a tow tug, both nice details for an aircraft carrier model.

The decal sheet is large and contains all sorts of deck markings, including outlines around the elevators, flight deck stripe, and hull lines.  Ensigns are also included, as are decals for the aircraft.  A couple of colorful name plates round out the sheet.  The decals are very crisply printed, with excellent register.  They have a flat finish, which hopefully won't present a problem in application, especially around the large clear areas.

With the basic overview out of the way, let's look at some of the specifics.  Overall, the quality is pretty good, with such things as vents and hatches well represented.  The thick plastic might turn some away, but once you come to terms with the large sprue gates and take care with removing the parts, the hefty plastic will help create a very sturdy hull assembly.

There is one annoying issue that I noticed, though, and it's all the more annoying given how easily it could have been avoided.  This is with the prominent ejector pin marks on many of the parts.  Now, ejector pins are a necessity in injection molded kits, but generally these are placed in such a way as to not be seen on the finished kit.  For many parts in this kit, though, Airfix has placed those ejector pins on the detail side of parts, instead of the plain flat side.  In pretty much every instance, had these parts been flipped over on the sprues, this wouldn't have been an issue.  While these aren't that tough to fix, it is surprising to see Airfix make such a mistake.

The other molding issue is with the aircraft.  First off, they're molded solid, so no clear canopies here.  While for some aircraft this would not be a big deal, the large bubble canopy on the Harriers really scream out for clear.  The more fastidious could cut the canopies off and replace them with some clear sprue, sanded to shape.  The other issue is with the panel lines, which are quite heavy.  There are a couple of ways to rectify this.  One could use Mr. Surfacer to tone them down, or for a more complex method, one could fill the panel lines with stretch sprue.  The latter would take more time, but would also yield a more realistic look.

Conclusion

Overall, this is an excellent model from Airfix that makes a great first impression for their foray into 1/350 scale.  While there are some small issues, this will build up into an impressive example of the HMS Illustrious.  I am sure it will not be long before we see plenty of aftermarket sets for this kit.  I, for one, would love to see a backdate kit to take this back to an early-80s fitting, complete with FRS.1 Sea Harriers.  Maybe we will see that from Airfix before too long.  My thanks to Airfix USA for the review sample.