Special Hobby 1/72 scale
Westland Whirlwind Mk.I

by Roland Sachsenhofer

Westland Whirlwind Mk.I

Special Hobby's 1/72 scale Whirlwind Mk.I is available online from Squadron.com

Conceived in 1937 and first flown in October 1938, the Whirlwind should equip the Royal Ai Force with a hard hitting, fast and manoeuvrable twin engined fighter armed with four 20mm canons. After two years of evaluation and development, the first Whirlwinds were delivered to 263. and 137 Squadron. These should be the only units putting the Whirlwind into combat: despite proving its capability as a potent fighter and, in its later years, as a fighter-bomber, a real throwback emerged in form of the unreliable R&R Peregrine engines.

In 1943 further production and development of the flawed Peregrine was stopped on behalf of more needed Merlins. Consequently this meant the production of the Whirlwind being stopped.

Special Hobby provides a sound and well equipped multimedia kit with etched and resin parts for cockpit/interior, wheels/ wheel well area and the armament. Decals are of excellent quality, making possible to build four different Whirlwinds with Dark Green/ Dark Earth or Medium Sea Gray/ Dark Green surfaces. As a short run kit you have to put some extra work to neat the plastic parts, work with filler and sandpaper is something you should like.

Some extras with copper wire have been done in the cockpit and on the wheels, besides that, the Whirlwind was build out of the box.

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Thumbnail panels:

If you are interested in the building process, please have a look on the workbench at the JAM Forum.

As ever, remarks will be appreciated: ro.sachsenhofer@gmx.at

Model, Images and Text Copyright © 2015 by Roland Sachsenhofer
Page Created 19 February, 2015
Last Updated 19 February, 2015

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