Finally making progress on this bird… The Sea Hurricane Mk IA starts life as the Revell 1/32 Hurrican Mk IIC, but gets “regunned” to eight .303s and I have to add catapault spools… A little background on this rather “unusual” Hurricane variant.
The Royal Navy, having lost the fleet carriers HMS Courageous and HMS Glorious, came up with a “Churchillian” solution to stopping the German FW-200 Condor and He 11H bombers from hitting the North Atlantic convoys as they approached the mainland via the Western Approaches to home ports… They modified some ex-RAF Fighter Comand Hurricane Mk Is (Actual “Battle of Britain” veterans with really high-time in the logbook and on the airframe) to the Mk IA model Sea Hurricane, or “Hurricat”. Flying boats took care of the submarine threat, but the bombers were another story. As the the first step, the Fleet Air Arm called for and received volunteers to fly Fulmars from specially built fighter catapault ships, HMS Pegasus, Maplin, Ariguani, Patia, and Springbank. The Fulmar-equipped CAM-ships met with no successes, since the Fulmars were too slow to catch the German bombers… Enter the Sea Hurricane.
The “Hurricat” was launched, via catapault and 3-inch rocket-assist, from the bow of a CAM (Catapault Aircraft Merchantmen)-ship. Each CAM-ship had one Hurricane with two pilots assigned, so that four-hour “Cockpit Readiness” watches could be maintained once the convoys came within range of the German-held coast of France. (They didn’t operate at night however, since any parachuting/ditching pilot would very likely be lost in the darkness…) The idea was that once the enemy formation was located, the Sea Hurricanes would launch, engage the bombers, then either fly to a land-base that was within range of the plane’s remaining fuel, or ditch/bail out in front of the convoy (had to be in front, as the ships would NOT stop to pick anyone up) and be recovered. This was the case more often than not, since the pilots had a tendency to want to get back to their ship rather than be stuck ashore for some reason… (I don’t understand that, but then I never was Navy guy… )
The first successful action of a cat-launched Sea Hurricane intercept was done by a 40 year-old (Take THAT kiddies) Austrailian, LT Commander R.W.H. Everett from the CAM-ship HMS Maplin on 2 August, 1941. Launched to shoot down a Focke-Wulf 200 “Snooper”, Everett engaged and destroyed it but was unable to bail out, due to a snagged 'chute/seat harness, and he instead ditched, promptly disappearing under the waves…
Fighting his way out of the cockpit after having cut through his 'chute and seat harness, he managed to get to the surface and was promptly picked up, little worse for the wear, although he became violently ill for a bit after “gulping down several gallons of seawater”, he said…
As the first pilot to have shot down an enemy aircraft with the Hurricat, he was awarded the DSO.
As more modern fighters entered the fray, they were gradually removed from service, although some Mk iCs continued to work the Gibraltar route until mid-1942.
The cockpit of the kit is rather nice, typical of the big Revell kits of the 60s and 70s. It’s moldng is two-dimensional though, so some attention has to be placed in this area… The A-frames on either side of the seat pan need to be perpendicular to the cockpit sidewalls, not paralell to them, as you see here:
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After adding masking tape seat harness-straps through a slot drilled in the deat back, I went to work on it. I didn’t try to copy the origianl cockpit, just wanted to make it look a bit more 3D and a bit “busier”…
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I added some sheet and strip styrene here & there for the oxygen gauges and regulator, breaker panel, added flattened solder hardware to the harness straps, and a Sculpy Clay seat cuchion and headrest. The headrest was unique to the Hurricat, due to the 4-G take-off in 70 feet… I made some stretched-sprue tubing for the oxygen supply lines, added “garage-sale sign” sheet-styrene O2 regulator, lamp rheostat with a “salami-sliced” piece of sprue for the knob, the cockpit lamp, etc, on the port side, and an epoxy putty map case, some switch panels, and a GNDN (Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing) wiring harness on the starboard side, as well as other fiddly-bits, just to busy things up a bit more. Since the photos were taken, I’ve also added a hand-hold forward of the throttle quadrant (to keep the pilot from inadvertantly pulling the throttle back on launch), which was re-done as well to a little higher degree of detail than the kit’s. …
After looking at the above photo, I stripped and repainted the seat pan… (I had stupidly applied Tamiya paint with a brush, and we know what THAT does, lol)
I test-fit the cockpit to make sure that I didn’t have sprue sticking into the joints to cause a fit-problem later, and I also finished up the instrument panel. I usually do these big Revell fighter-panels another way, painting them white first, then coloriing them with a black Sharpie. After the ink dries, I remove the ink on the raised detail and reveal the white by using an alcohol-dampened (not wet) paintbrush, but this kit’s panel had a decal, so I opted to use it instead. I just “Sharpied” the panel black, then applied the decal with some vinegar (my prefered decal setting-solution) to snuggle it down, and then shot some Dullcoat over it to seal it in place. The Sharpie leaves a gloss finish, so no clear gloss-coat was needed for decaling the panel.
I also discovered that when the fuselage halves are mated, most of the work disappears, lol… So I’m glad I didn’t go hog-wild on scratch-building the office a bit better…
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Now to finish the detail painting on the A-frames, scratch-build a better gunsight, and then onto the engine…
