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MPM’s 1/72 Hawker Sea Hawk Mk. 100

By Chris Banyai-Riepl

Overview

At the end of the Second World War, everyone was jumping on the jet aircraft bandwagon, with just about every major manufacturer worldwide trying their hand and producing jet-powered fighters. In Britain the RAF already had successful jet fighters with the Gloster Meteor and de Havilland Vampire, but the FAA was slow to adopt the jet engine to its fighter fleet. The lackluster performance from the Supermarine Attacker didn't help matters any, either, but when Hawker entered the ring, its fighter proved to be an excellent entry-level jet for the FAA.

Powered by the Rolls Royce Nene engine, the Sea Hawk was a fairly straightforward design, with a straight wing layout and a conventional fuselage. Hawker designers departed from the conventional thinking when it came to the jet exhaust, though. Rather than have the exhaust pipe run the length of the rear fuselage, they split it and had two exhaust pipes exiting at the wing trailing edge. This, combined with the split air intake, greatly increased the internal capacity of the plane, allowing for more fuel capacity and more equipment to be carried internally. This resulted in a cleaner airframe, which helped greatly in performance.

The Sea Hawk entered service in the early 1950s and quickly found itself in many FAA squadrons. It saw combat during the Suez Crisis in 1956 and it also ended up in several foreign operators hands, including India, Germany, and the Netherlands.

The Kit

This kit is identical to the earlier MPM release, warts and all, except for the necessary changes needed to make the German aircraft.  This is most notable in the larger vertical fin.  When I saw the boxtop I was hoping that the kit would include the drop tanks but this isn’t the case.

The other change (of course) is with the decals.  You get two German options and one Indian.  All three are finished in the same colors of Extra Dark Sea Gray over Sky.  The two German examples are from MFG 2, one from 1959 and the other from the mid-1960s.  They differ only in the fuselage numbers (RB+248 and RB+242 being the choices), with RB+242 also having the MFG 2 unit emblem both on the forward fuselage and on the fin.  The Indian example is from 300 Squadron off of the INS Vikrant in late 1960.  Indian roundels are in the usual positions and this plane carries a black W on the fin.  What’s most notable about this scheme is that MPM managed to get the proper order for the Indian roundels this time (they were reversed in the first Sea Hawk release).

Conclusion

This is the best 1/72 Sea Hawk kit out there, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect.  Expect a fair amount of work to fix things like the see-through aspect of the intakes/exhaust and the lack of interior detail.  Still, MPM should be thanked for offering both main Sea Hawk variants, allowing you the ability to build just about any Sea Hawk that catches your fancy.