BILEK 1:72 FAIREY BATTLE
Reviewer: Myself (braithy@bigpond.com) - Addendum supplied by Jason Sou at end
The Fairey Battle was designed to meet a 1932 requirement for a two-seat light day bomber able to carry a 1,000-lb bombload over 1,000 miles at around 200 mph. This aircraft first flew in 1936 and its successful transition into production by 1937 saw more than 1800 Battles built, operational in 16 Squadrons by commencement of WW2. The RAF sent 10 Battle Squadrons to France and though it was modern by late 30's standards it was obsolete by 1940 and was easy prey for German fighters and anti-aircraft gunners. In fact, they suffered such disastrous losses after the German invasion of 1940, that the surviving aircraft were withdrawn. Some of the type were then employed for a short time as a night bomber against German seaborne invasion preparations but most were converted to target tugs and carried the designation TT.Mk 1. They were initially fitted with Merlin engines and their designation number matched the Merlin engine design - ie: Battle Mk.1 had the Merlin I engine fitted, Mk.II had the Merlin II engine fitted and so forth til Mk.V.
Until this point I had basically no knowledge whatsoever of Bilek kits and had (wrongly) assumed them to be another challenging but decent mold out of the Czech Republic with vac form canopies etc - something along the lines of MPM, CMK, Czechmaster, Pavla and so forth. When I opened the box I was completely (and pleasantly) surprised by the mold quality not unlike a Heller, Revell or Airfix kit, complete with injection mold canopies, alignment pins and so forth. I was extremely eager to start playing with this one and was sold on the product before construction commenced. I was to find out that I was perhaps too eager with my assessment, although generally I was not going to be disappointed.
In the box you are greeted with very nicely molded parts - olive green in colour - with plenty of external detail covered by raised panel lines and rivets. Of course some of these are going to disappear under later sanding but otherwise looks very good. A couple of interesting things are noticed, the flaps on the main wings are moveable after construction and the undercarriage is molded in a way to allow the wheels to turn once completed. The rudder doesn't look to be correctly molded and there is no 'dimple' effect as evident in photos. The whole canopy set is in four pieces but one can see that the familiar small windows evident in the above boxart beside the rear gunner are not reproduced correctly in this kit. There are two clear parts are provided for what appears will be wing mounted landing lights - nice. Two pilot figures are also provided to include in the cockpit and rear gunner stations.
The instructions are somewhat of a let down, set out on a single A4 sized sheet of paper in small but adequate diagrams. There are no colour call outs for individual items and the sketches are inaccurate in parts that make it difficult which way a piece should go or exactly where on a part a connecting piece should be positioned. This caused much annoyance later in the construction process and one would be best advised to dry fit some possible problem components in all sorts of ways before ultimately deciding final placement. There are other vague symbols outlined in the instructions that are not clarified but from having a good look it appears that shaded squares indicate 'Do Not Cement', non-shaded squares indicate 'optional' component choices and shaded circles denote clear parts. This is useful for the flaps and undercarriage construction to allow them to be moveable.
Construction starts with the cockpit and this is very nicely detailed. You are provided with rear bulkhead where the seat is attached to, authentic control column, front armour wall with instrument panel attached containing raised detail. Be careful in positioning the pilot's seat - make sure it is right in the middle otherwise you will have problems with the canopy. The rear gunner station is not quite brimming with similar detail, you simply get a seat (although very nicely done) and base to stick your figure onto. This is one part where the instructions are not good as far as the sketch is concerned. This indicates the seat is put about halfway down the base where in fact its placed in the hole up one end. This end is actually closest to the front of the aircraft but placing the rear gunner in that position will result in the inability of having gun exposed and canopy folded back (ie: he will need to be closed in). For an open rear-cockpit you will need to fill in the hole for the seat and later in the assembly process carefully place the gunner in the right position about halfway down the base. Both cockpit areas were painted overall in interior green with black panelling - grey cockpit seat, navy blue rear gunner seat.
The next step in the process is glueing the fuselage halves together and encasing cockpit, undernose intake and propellor. Be wary if choosing to make a moveable propellor because simply following the lines for attachment on the parts will result in a very loose propellor assembly up a little. The intake also needs to be given a bit of attention when trapping between the fuselage as not enough gap has been allowed for a good sit. The fuselage halves themselves were a bit resistant when put together, especially the nose area, and the back area was prone to slipping.
The wings go on nicely but a bit of filler (and sanding off those lovely panel lines :( ) was required in the wing roots and nose join lines. One of the tailplanes was imperfectly molded on the outer edges and this is noticeable when looking at the tailplane in detail. Small bombs are placed (two each wing) in small bays inside the main wings and the doors all carried a nasty looking ejector pin mark. Mold imperfections and ejector pin marks were quite noticeable on many of the smaller parts. The bombs are just a tad big for the bays (but fit okay) and they are best placed inside before fixing on the doors. I painted the bombs in dark green and the rest of the bay interior (and wheel well interior) in matt black. The bay doors are curved and are very difficult to sit to display the open doors - the bays are rectangle in shape! The solution was to sit and hold the doors in position with very fast setting super glue - it worked but was a bit time consuming (and difficult to keep the glue off the skin!). In the end I achieved a good sit and these look very nice under the aircraft.
The undercarriage is nicely done and as stated is molded to be moveable. The tyre and rim is basically separate and is not cemented to the connector pins or strut. I wanted a wheels up plane (about half the wheel extends out of the well) and the instructions again are a little vague. Solution: assemble the undercarriage as normal then (assume you have lowered undercarriage) cut off just the bit of strut that would be exposed between the wing and front guard/bracket. The guard/bracket act as the wheel well cover that exposes half the wheel and you will need to refer to the instructions to ensure you place the correct wheel assembly in the correct wheel well. It's easy to get it wrong. The rear wheel is placed underneath the rear of the fuselage and the hole is too big. I dabbed a touch of putty in the hole, waited for it to harden just a little and carefully placed the rear wheel in this, with super glue to strengthen it.
The landing lights on the wings were a nice touch (would Airfix had've included these?) and I painted the insides with aluminium. A small attachment mimicking the globe is also put inside and I painted this silver and once the clear cover was placed this looks really good. A part (cannon?) is attached on the wing next to the starboard landing light and is noted as Part 55 on the instructions - there is no Part 55 on the sprue that I could find but a part matching its description that appears not to be numbered was found and assumed was the correct piece.
Now comes the real downpoint of the kit - the canopy set - nicely injection molded but annoyingly out of alignment and accuracy. They all go in line very nicely but don't sit really nicely on the fuselage. The distinctive main canopy (covering the pilot) is larger in size than the canopy pieces behind it leaving a gap no matter how you try and sit it. The windscreen is too steep in the only way it will sit properly - otherwise looks okay if the pilot canopy was a touch smaller. As pointed out early in this review, the small windows either side of the rear gunner are not evident but the rear canopy does go down and mimicks a "one and a half" set of windows. A bit of filler was needed to plug up some gaps.
Only one example is produced by the kit, a night bomber from an unspecified regiment (J-HA side fuselage lettering and serial K-9353 on fin and rear fuselage side) depicted in upper dark green/military brown camouflage and matt black undersides - quoted references are Humbrol (116/186/33 respectively) and Model Master (1710/1701/1749 resp.). I agreed with the green and black denotions for Humbrol but chose Matt 30 for the Earth Brown colouring. The decals were thin and needed a lot of care when applying. The small serial lettering was prone to curl and disintegrate and I needed to call upon my spares to add digits in stages when one of my serials was ruined in spite of every care given. The red & blue upper wing roundels had to be applied carefully to the ribbing texture and were a little resistant in conforming but once squeezed of air bubbles setted nicely. Once they are in place they are actually quite nice.
Reviewing my review :) it seems that I have in parts given this kit a bit of a bagging, but really it is a very nice kit. Sticklers for accuracy will not like the moveable flaps (because they do tend to detract from clean lines and panelling) and the canopy as pointed out really needs to be completely replaced or redone to be accurate, but it can be lived with and in the hands of an experienced manipulator should achieve a reasonable finish. Otherwise the kit goes together very well, fit is generally very good and very little flash was required to be cleaned off. Discounting the few flaws this kit would certainly be a highly recommended project for all modelling skill levels.
(ADDENDUM: supplied by Jason Sou): I would suggest that the Bilek Fairey Battle and the old Airfix Fairey Battle are one and the same – with the only difference being the decal sheet, box art and (probably) parts of the instruction sheet. I have built the Airfix kit,some ten years ago, and the decals allowed one to complete either an RAF or a Belgian Battle.
Bilek leased many Airfix moulds including the Dornier Do 17 E/F, Blohm und Voss Bv 141, Petlyakov Pe-2, Focke-Wulf Fw 189, Westland Whirlwind fighter, and Handley-Page Hampden. Airfix has since re-issued some of the above kits, in line with their policy of rotating their moulds.
The Airfix kit is actually quite inaccurate in basic shape and outline as the mould was created using the wrong set of plans supplied by FAIREY front-office staff. Basically, the shape of the wings is out-of-true and the forward fuselage and position of the canopy is incorrect, so if a totally accurate Battle is desired from this kit, a lot of work will have to be done. The best reference to the work needed is the article "How to build a better Battle" by Alan W. Hall and Ian Huntley, which appeared on pages 20-22 of Scale Aircraft Modelling magazine Vol 9 No 1 (October 1986). This issue also features the Fairey Battle as the ‘aircraft of the month’ and includes 16 pages of photos, text and 27 side profiles of RAAF, RAF, RCAF, Belgian, and Irish Battles.
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