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.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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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
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