Wimpey Revisited

Wellington Mk 1C.

- Steve Cullen

The Vickers Wellington has of course many claims to fame. It was the strange inheritor of an earlier era, with the its geodetic structure being inspired by Barnes Wallis’ earlier work on airships. It was only one of two geodetic aircraft that saw action during World War II, the other being its predecessor, the Vickers Wellesley. The Wellington also saw much more service than its more famous wartime contemporary, the Lancaster, and continued to serve long after 1945, in a variety of roles. All of which would lead one to assume that it would be a popular aircraft for manufacturers, but that’s sadly not the case. As far as I can make out, there have only been five 1/72 versions in injection moulded plastic, though with some additions and changes as initial kits have been modified for subsequent releases. The first Wellington in 1/72 was the ancient Airfix kit from the 1960s. I well remember making that kit in the early 1970s, and even as an ignorant schoolboy wondering why the RAF had a plane that sported huge, gaping gaps between wings and engine nacelles...

Italeri’s Wellington Mk IC is the latest release of what was originally MPM’s short run kit in 2002. The word on the net is that there have been various small changes to MPM’s original kit in subsequent releases by Airfix and Revell, but that none have really addressed some of the basic problems. This out of box build was a struggle at some points, and it is certainly a curate’s egg of a kit, but in the end it built into a reasonably decent looking model of this important aircraft.