Bombers

Depends on what scale you are looking for. 1/72, 1/48?? Won't find much above those.

Bill Shuey

1/72 scale, need to know which are the most accurate. I know the short stirling is only made by airfix. but the others have multi makers versions.

Airfix make the best Lancaster in that scale, also their Halifax III is good - especially if you replace the engine cowlings with Beaufighter units, and the transparencies with Falcon or home made ones. Matchbox also do a Halifax II with Merlin engines, but again I'd suggest using their parts on the Airfix kit as the basis.

MPM have produced an early Wellington recently to complement the Airfix and Matchbox versions. There should be some reviews available on the net. Normally I'd give the links, but it's late here and you can do that yourself :)

The Stirling is only available from Airfix, and with yet more replacement Beau engines and new transparencies, is a good likeness of the aircraft. In general the Airfix kits are well proportioned and can be made into good representations - with a lot of work by the modeller.

Chek

Airfix Airfix Airfix Revell ex Matchbox

"GRAHAM WALKER" wrote in message news:Wzkwd.548$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe6-gui.ntli.net...

Hi Graham, In 1/72nd scale, the current production Airfix Lancasters are about the best. The last one I had a go at was the Dambusters issueand it suffered from some sever warpage, it was a difficult build for this reason alone, previous issues of the same kit had no such problems.. This was about 5 years ago when many Airfix kits had this kind of QC problem, I'm uncertain how things stand with current production. The Matchbox and Frog kits are quite passable if you can find them, the latter having a Tallboy bomb included. For the Halifax, Matchbox made a nice representation of the Merlin engined type, albeit with the usual heavy panelwork. The Airfix kit of the Hercules engined types is old but passable, biggest problem to me being the crude moving control surfaces - not difficult, but lots of work to make them sit convincingly in any position. Both Halifax kits are pretty thin on detail. Short Stirling has Airfix as the only option. Not built this in years, but from memory it's typical old Airfix. Looks like a Stirling but I've no idea of it's accuracy.. Until recently all available Wellingtons were poor. The Frog and Airfix kits have severe shape problems, most noticeably around the nose. The Matchbox (now Revell) kit is better and had excellent surface detail, apparently not so good in recent issues following mould restoration. The big problem with the Matchbox kit is the fuselage cross section is awful, it's just too fat and round. The MPM Wellington issued in the last couple of years is said to be a great improvement over all that's gone before. It certainly looks good in all the online builds I've seen, but not having even checked out the kit in the box I will reserve judgement. It can't really be worse than the other options..... Cheers, Bill.