Tornado GR.1

Panavia Tornado GR.1

Revell, 1/32

If he didn't then, he sure did now. Over the radio he heard the voice of an excited American pilot requesting an emergency landing. He could see fire trucks racing towards the runway and then he saw the F-16 on finals. "No wonder the pilots excited" he thought, as he could see that the Viper was badly damaged and its pilot was struggling to keep it under control. When it landed safely he gave a silent cheer. "Good job Yank" he thought, and it was truly clear to him now, if it wasn't before, that this was a shooting war for real. He had only had time for one brief phone call with his tearful wife before the deployment. He wondered if he would ever see her again, but quickly pushed that out of his mind - he couldn't afford to dwell on such thoughts right now.

And so 617 had arrived. With their exercise in Norway cancelled, they had been placed on 24 hours notice to deploy, chosen to spearhead the British response to the North Korean invasion due to their high state of readiness. Those 24 hours had been a mad scramble to organise their deployment. Transports, ordnance, tankers, routes, call signs and a host of other things needed to be organised. Their job had been made easier by the fact that much of their equipment and personnel had already been "booked" onto Hercules transports to fly to Norway. Of course, now they were facing a long trip east rather that a short hop west. On February 15th they departed RAF Lossiemouth for Japan via Iceland, Canada and Hawaii. They had landed at Goose Bay in Canada to rest and refuel and when they took off again their formation had swelled - the 6 Tornados permanently based at Goose Bay for training had been ordered to join the deployment. More planes would no doubt follow in the next few days, as would the 1st Air Landing Brigade and numerous warships. Thommo would also have to wait for his ground crews, equipment and munitions to arrive, but for now The Dambusters would be the vanguard of Great Britain’s response to Communist aggression. Thommo was the CO of the most famous squadron in the RAF, and as he climbed out of the cockpit into the freezing Japanese winter air he only hoped that under his command they would continue their proud tradition.

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The Revell 1/32 Tornado has been around for at least a decade now, but it wasn't until 1998 when it was re-released with some re-tooling and extra sprues that it was possible to build an accurate RAF Tornado OOB. The kit has been in my stash for several years, and I would occasionally get it out and fondle the plastic before putting it back. I picked it up at the Waddington air show for £22, though the price has now crept up to just over £30. You get a lot of plastic for your money. Apart from the main kit, you get a ton of stores options - both styles of RAF drop tanks, Sky Shadow & BOZ pods, 1000lb iron bombs, 1000lb LGBs, 2 Sidewinders as well as stores for the German Tornado - ECM pods, Buddy refueling pods and more. The giant decal sheet is glossy and well printed with 3 options - the colourful 31 squadron special scheme on the box top, 617 squadron (both grey/green) and "Mig Killer" in Desert Pink with a shark mouth and lots of mission markings. The plastic is well moulded with nice engraved detail, but it is rather thin......more on this later.

I wanted to do it in an artic scheme as worn by RAF attack planes when they deploy to Norway for winter exercises, but I could find no photos of either 31 or 617 squadron - the 2 squadron markings options on the kits decal sheet - in that scheme. And being as it doesn't have a swastika on the fin, decal sheets are rather thin on the ground for 1/32 Tornados.

Armorama came to the rescue with their Twilight 2000 group build - a winter war between East & West giving me the opportunity to build my Artic camo Tornado. The day I found the T2K group build was the day I pulled the kit out the loft and began.

Revell's cockpit is very similar in quality to their 1/32 Hunter. Excellent panel detail, nice seats apart from the dreadful belts and no sidewall detail at all. It’s adequate, but in this scale you can do so much more. If you intend to have the canopy open then I would say replacement seats are a must, and if you want to push the boat out a whole cockpit set in Resin or EB would look amazing. My biggest problem with the cockpit - a problem that would surface a lot with this kit - was my lack of really good references. Good quality close up photos are a must when you are building these big kits IMO. Time and time again I found myself asking "what colour is that?", "how does this look on the real thing?" etc. That and the poor seatbelts on the kits bang seats led me to decide to leave the canopy closed.

Construction of the rest of the kit is relatively straightforward. I say relatively. The plastic used by Revell is quite thin & brittle and many of the location tabs between the larger pieces are small or non-existent. Thus many of the major joins are quite weak, and I was often never really confident about their strength. In one article on this kit I read, the author talked about the kit "creaking" every time he picked it up. Although mine isn't quite that bad I know what he means. This problem is compounded by Revell falling into a time warp and thinking they are Airfix in the 1970s - there are several "kiddyfied" options. The tailplanes are supposed to be moveable, as are the stores pylons under the swingable wings. The result is that these parts are relatively weak, a bit of a problem on such a big and heavy kit. I broke off one of the tailplanes twice and by the time I had finished the starboard wing had a noticeable sag on it as the weight of the wing and its stores had been stronger than the weakling plastic securing the wing in the fuselage. This wing sag on one side is very noticeable when viewed from the front, despite my best efforts to rectify the situation. The other major problem with the kit is the nose gear. Despite reading about it in several reviews, I still forgot this! The nose gear is several mm too long. The result is that instead of having that distinctive Tornado slightly nose down look, it has a slightly nose up look. I didn't realise this until it was too late. I could have broken off the nose gear and cut some off, but I was worried about the subsequent strength of the gear when I glued it back in place, so I decided to leave it.

As well as being able to pose the canopy open (including the bracing strut used to keep them open) the kit also gives you the choice of airbrakes open or closed and to have the radome open in order to display the radar. The radar as provided in the kit looks OK, but I often find that these kind of options in a kit lack the detail to really do a good job without extra detail from resin or EB, and again lacking in references, I chose to keep the radome closed. I did decide to pose the airbrakes open as photos showed that Tornados do occasionally park with them open. It also gave me the chance to highlight the excellent detail there using a tip from Barry "John Howling Moose" Snell, of using a wash of Future/Klear & Tamiya Black acrylic. I applied the same technique on the landing gear/wheel wells and it really highlights the detail wonderfully. Thanks for the tip Baz!

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Page created December 15, 2004