EYE CANDY TODAY - BEAUTIFUL FRENCH MODELS

SMN report:

Here’s a chance to be a little different and take your model making skills away from the usual high-profile combat types. Apart from modern combat jets, Airbus products and a few rockets, the French aerospace industry seems somewhat shortchanged in the model department, at least from the mainstream manufacturers. And yet France has a splendid history going right back to the pioneer days of aviation.

APPROACHING TOUCHDOWN - AIRFIX 1:72 SCALE VICKERS VALIANT V-BOMBER

SMN report

The Airfix 2011 catalogue promised the Valiant earlier this year (SMN story here), and the 1:72 scale kit is now coming in to land, with general sales expected around May 10. The subject is the four-engine Vickers-Armstrong Valiant jet bomber, developed after World War II to counter the Soviet threat in the early days of the Cold War. The swept-wing Valiant was the first design to fly of the ‘V-Force’, three British bombers designed to penetrate Soviet airspace and deliver nuclear weapons in the event of the Cold War turning hot. 

In the model world, there has been little shortage of the other two V-bombers, the dramatic-looking Handley-Page Victor, and the big-delta Avro Vulcan, but the comparatively no-frills Valiant has been something of a Cinderella. Still, here we are now with what looks a very interesting kit indeed.

Prototype Valiant about to land at the UK Farnborough Air Show, 1951.