Shelf Oddities

Enhancing Miniwing's Attacker

- Huw Morgan

Miniwing's Attacker FB2 has been around for a couple of years now, and back in November 2015 my SIG 144 colleague Mike Verier reviewed and built the kit for SAM. More recently, an etched brass detail set has become available from Polish company Shelf Oddity who focus on 1/144, making an encore worthwhile.

The Attacker was an unfortunate aeroplane, a little too ahead of its time in terms of available engine power, and a little behind the times in terms of its straight wings, tail dragger fuselage and fat body. Nevertheless, it formed an important link for the immediate postwar Royal Navy as its first carrier borne jet, ushering in the improved capability of the Swift and Scimitar. Born of expediency, the Attacker mated the laminar flow wing of the Spiteful with a new fuselage built around the Nene 102 centrifugal flow engine.

Attacker in Miniature

Miniwing's kit comprises twenty nine parts in nicely cast cream resin, together with clear resin or formed canopies and a small fret of etched brass for the rocket launch rails and a couple of antennae. Shelf Oddity's brass adds another fifty six parts, primarily for the undercarriage and intake boundary layer splitters, although there is a significant insert for the upper fuselage to represent the intake blow-in doors on the spine, and which will require major surgery if the doors are to be shown open.

To add some variety I decided to model the aircraft with the outer wing panels folded, so some scratch building would be the order of the day.

The kit offers two schemes:

• WP 286, 101/J, 800 Naval Air Squadron, FAA, HMS Eagle, extra dark sea grey/sky/red

• R4003, Pakistani Air Force, all over aluminum. Note that the Pakistani aircraft were not fitted with the arrestor hook supplied in the Shelf Oddity set, which is absent in the basic model

Build