"Men of the Fighting Lady" is another Korean-era, Panthers off the carrier type of movie. If you've read the original story you know that the planes were Banshees there.
I stumbled into the Hunter thing back around '64. I went to Woolworth's hoping to find a Hawker Hurricane and, finding none, settled for an Airfix Hunter. Well, it was a Hawker!
I'll have to settle for the Dauntless. It had the dive brakes, bomb crutch and the rear gun raised and lowered. If the breeze was blowing correctly you could set it in the window and watch the prop turn.
That was slick how they got those dive brakes to work so well. I had a F-8 Crusader in 1/48 that had retracting gear, removable rear fuselage to show jet engine, movable control surfaces, and...ejecting pilot! I think it was an Aurora one. About the oddest working feature I ever saw was the Dragon Models (almost immediately renamed DML) Typhoon sub, which was their first release...retract the diving planes, and a torpedo emerged from the bow tubes...push on the torpedo, and the diving planes came out again. At the time it came out (the 1980's) that seemed like a real throw-back feature on a model... but the model also had really sharp work on the anechoic tiles and a textured exterior surface. Big things were in the future for this company, and around a decade later I was going to be driven half-mad threading photoetched seatbelt buckles onto paper seatbelts on their Go-229 model. They raised the bar for aircraft models the same way Tamiya did it for tanks a couple of decades earlier. I've got that He-111/V-1 kit they engineered for Revell-Monogram, and that canopy is a wonderment - finally a cockpit well worth superdetailing, as you have a near optical quality canopy to put over it stock with the kit.
That Crusader sounds more like the Lindberg kit. I don't think Aurora's was that busy - or accurate. I built a couple of DML's aircraft and I was rather disappointed in the quality of the instructions. There were too many vague directions. I did eventually sell the YF-23 but the YF-22, well, let's say it couldn't pull out of a fatal dive to the concrete floor.
That's what I thought at first also, but for some reason I associate it with Aurora, rather than Lindberg. It may have been the one on this catalog page:
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's from this website, which has a lot of their catalogs:
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that the Gotha went for $2.00 at the time, that would be about what one would expect, and you note the painting shows the engine being exposed...this may have been one of the kits I got down at the TSC store that I mentioned had all of the Aurora kits at close-out prices; in fact, I'm pretty sure it was. It wasn't motorized, and the Lindberg one was (jet engine sound). It also had rivets all over it, and that was odd for a Lindberg jet kit. Aurora did a pretty slick 1/48 F-111 just prior to their demise, it became the basis for the Monogram kit.
Boy, you're lucky you never got some of the more involved ones... you'd have fun sticking the photoetched parts on the He-162's BMW-003 engine. ;-) The F-22/F-23kits were turned out really fast and rough on their part to cash in on the fly-off between the two aircraft.
You are probably right as I don't remember many rivets on the Lindberg kit. I surely remember that F-100 in the middle of that page. That was one of my first two kits. The F-94C was the other. I bought seconds of both before they went OOP. The F-100 was an early 'A' if not a YF-100A. It had the short vertical tail that doomed a couple of the real planes.
Neat site. I see I'm going to have to go back and reminisce through those catalogues.
Yes, I remember helping a neighbour's child with the Aurora kit back in the '70s.
Obviously it is another case of judging a manufacturer by one of their less than prime quality kits. Both kits were built but I wasn't happy with the building. They turned me off to whatever else they issued.
I was amazed to find out that Lindberg may still be in business, and selling those ancient 1/48th scale aircraft kits of theirs; You can download the 2007 catalog here:
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has their XF-88 "Voodoo" jet in it and your F-94C, as well as a odd combo of their Jurassic Park dinosaurs and those awful Pyro dinosaur kits. They also sell some Hawk kits as well as Testors ones. One of the things they have reissued is their 1/8 scale dragster double kit, which is one of the models I had the most fun making when I was a kid. It's huge and lets you pretty much design your own dragster:
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of course to go with the Transparent Man, Transparent Woman, and Transparent Horse, they have the Transparent Alien:
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mention the Transparent Dinosaur, although it's not in the catalog. This place has what's available at the moment:
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're even bring back some of the old tyro full-scale gun kits.
Wouldn't mind having a few of those Aurora Avro Arrows or F-107s in their original boxes. That Ryan Vertijet is also a pretty collectible item I'm sure. I noticed they had a model of the Q-ship Atlantis... I thought that Revell had made that one.
i really want one of the build it yourself electric motors they had. or two. if anyone has some to sell. in my group of friends, i was the only one who's motors worked. i thought they were simple and easy from the instructions, but my friends just couldn't do it. but i wasn't the best painter in the group....
Considering that Airfix recently offered the Mk.9 and Heller had a T.3 (together you can cobble up an FAW.5) why change a perfectly good prototype model. BTW, the kit is in 1/72nd.
If you do go for a Mk.5 you can use the extra gear and a few other bits on the Hawk kit.
Yes, a gentleman bought out the moulds for Hawk and Lindberg (which include Pyro moulds) and moved the organisation to Iowa, I believe. I don't know where the actual moulding is going on but I'd hazard a guess it's on mainland China. I'm still working on my original XF-107. Al S. supplied me with patterns for the red arrows. Currently my printer is not functioning and getting anything done through my son's is like pulling teeth. IIRC, the Aurora kit is 1/107th scale. At one time I had every one of the WWI aircraft listed in that '64 Aurora catalogue. I never got the DH.10 built but I had it.
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