1/72 Czech Master Supermarine Scimitar

by Alex Bigey

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The last aircraft designed by Supermarine to reach production, the Scimitar evolved from an undercarriage-less fleet fighter. Trials with a modified Vampire proved this idea impractical and the design was modified to incorporate a conventional undercarriage. After a lengthy gestation period the definitive Scimitar design  finally came to fruition in 1956. However, even at this late stage, the role of the aircraft was changed from fighter to strike aircraft, although it retained its four cannon armament. A wide variety of stores could be carried underwing on 4 pylons including Bullpup missiles, which made it the first Royal Navy aircraft with nuclear capability. An initial order for 100 was placed but in the event only 76 were actually built. Although rather unforgiving and only supersonic in shallow dive, due to thick wing profile and lack of afterburner on its Rolls Royce Avon 202 turbojets, The Scimitar F.1 is a magnificent aircraft with both gracious and aggressive lines, and is best remembered for its incredible noise and being the first Royal Navy aircraft to at least rival its contemporary land based aircraft in performance and capability.

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I'm a Scimitar fan from the day in 1978 when my Dad bought me The Encyclopedia of Combat Aircraft by Bill Gunston. A nice black & white profile of the bird was inside, along with specification and performance data. I think that the Frog kit was already a rarity at the time. Shamefully since then, not a single injected plastic manufacturer issued a kit at any scale, to my knowledge. Both Magna Models and Czech Master have issued 1/72 resin kits in addition to the excellent 1/48 Dynavector vacform.

This one is the Czech Master resin, a rather difficult kit to assemble, but I think I could manage to do something that look like the real thing, however using the Magna kit canopy.

Alex

P.S:  You may see more of my building via my personal webpage: http://www.freewebs.com/aeroscale

Photos and text © by Alex Bigey