The Hawker Sea Fury

by Richard A. Franks

Valiant Wings Publishing
Airframe Album No.2

Reviewed by David Couche

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This is the revised 2nd edition of Valiant Wings, Airframe Album series previously released in 2013, and is titled The Hawker Sea Fury– A Detailed Guide To The Fleet Air Arm’s Last Piston-engine Fighter. It is authored by Richard A. Franks, a well-known name in modelling and aviation publishing.

This book contains a great wealth of period photographs of the Sea Fury in action during the Korean War and in general service for the many nations that flew the Sea Fury. Included are a number colour photographs which will provide great modelling references. The photographs selected are all clear and crisp in nature, with details clearly visible. There are quite a number of coloured profiles produced by Richard Caruana, illustrating the many schemes of the Sea Fury in Royal Naval service and in liveries of many of the nations that also used this versatile aircraft. Complementing the photos and profiles are numerous line drawings taken from Flight Manuals of the Sea Fury
The content of the book consists of five main sections plus appendices.

These are:

1. Technical Description
2. Evolution - Prototype, Production and Projected Variants
3. Camouflage and Markings
4. Kit Builds
5. Survivors

Appendices:

I. Kit List
II. Accessory List
III. Decal List
IV. Bibliography

The Technical Description section of the book, being 47 jammed packed pages, covers the airframe quite comprehensively from nose to tail. The cockpit and engine section.is jam packed with photographs, technical drawings, excerpts from Sea Fury Flight manuals and photos of restored examples. These sections have provided that special emphasis for details that will be of most interest to modellers.

The Evolution section of 9 pages on the airframe gives a very clear overview of the development of the Sea Fury, from the initial prototypes and pre-production airframes, right through to the multi-seat and export variants.

The Camouflage and Markings section (22 pages) provides many schemes used by the Royal Navy. Included are schemes for the nations that had procured the airframes for their services. There is a comprehensive explanation for each of the countries camouflage and colour schemes. It then moves into 6 pages of Richard J Caruana produced colour profiles from the prototypes through to the later red 2 seat trainer versions used by the Germans.

The 4th section of the book covers the specially commissioned kit builds, showing construction and conversion of 2 Sea Fury models. Kit builds include the newly released Airfix Sea Fury FB Mk 11 and an Arsenal Model Group (AMG) Sea Fury T Mk 20 “Royal Navy” with both examples by Steve A. Evans. This section is takes 9 pages.

The 5th section of 11 pages, focuses on the surviving Sea Fury aircraft around the world by country, giving a detailed history of each airframe and whether they are airworthy. What I did find interesting is, that there are still 30 airworthy Sea Fury’s in 2018 which is a high number considering only 864 were constructed in all variants.

The Appendices, again specifically for modellers, lists all Sea Fury kits available, accessories and decals produced in all scales. Unfortunately the choice is not great in the 1/32 lines, with much more in the 1/72 and 1/48 scales. For those interested the main kits would be the Fischer Models (1/32nd), Airfix, Trumpeter or Hobbycraft (1/48th), Special Hobby, High Planes, Airfix or one of the plethora of kits in 1/72nd scale. Added to this list, is the list of associated accessories of resin and photoetch. A further detailed list of available decal sets add another 3 pages with some great schemes shown.

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It’s good to see that there is also a bibliography including all previous book titles for the Sea Fury so you may chase up further information for your references.

This book has been deliberately produced for the modeller, providing an absolute wealth of reference photographs and detail, profiles and anything else one could wish for to produce and accurate, and even different, Sea Fury. For me, this review sample came close behind my purchase of the new Airfix Sea Fury and will certainly be used considerably in my build of the kit to ensure technical correctness of the RAN version I want to build. This is highly recommended to all wishing to build the Sea Fury in any scale.

Thanks to Valiant Wings Publishing for the sample.

Review Copyright © 2018 by David Couche
This Page Created on 24 July, 2018
Last updated 24 July, 2018

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