Build Review by: Dave Coward
Our thanks to The Airbrush Company Ltd for supplying our review sample. 
Take a look at the: Conclusion, Gallery and PDF…
Background
The Northrop P-61A was the first operational U.S. military aircraft designed specifically for night interception.
In the Battle of Britain in 1940, the RAF was at a loss countering the Luftwaffe’s night bombardment. In the darkness, the RAF fighters had fewer opportunities to attack than in the daylight.
This deeply concerned the US observers attached to the RAF at the time and, on their return to the USA, they demanded a fighter that could intercept and destroy enemy aircraft during the hours of darkness.
In November 1940, in response to a requirement issued by the USAAC, Northrop began design work on what was to become to worlds first purpose designed night fighter and the first of the two prototype XP-61 was subsequently flown on the 11th January 1941, which resulted in an order for 13 YP-61`s for operational suitability tests.
The P-61 was about the same size as a Medium Bomber and was powered by 2 Pratt & Whitney R-2800-10 Double Wasp 18 Cylinder Radial engines each producing 2000Bhp.
The fuselage contained an air interception radar in the nose, a three man crew and the main armament, which consisting of 4 belly mounted 20mm M2 cannons (later P-61B models also had 4 .50 cal machine guns in a dorsal turret). In addition, bombs could also be carried on wing hardpoints to allow for bombing sorties, although this was the exception rather than the rule.
The P-61 entered WWII in 1944 and served in all theatres of operation from Europe, to the Mediterranean, through the Pacific and through to China.
During its operational service, it destroyed 127 aircraft, 18 V-1 flying bombs and multiple locomotives. In all, 706 P-61’s were produced by Northrop.
The Kit contains two options from the box.
One is ‘Lady Gen’ that operated from Florennes in Belgium in 1944 and the second is the all black ‘Sweatin Wally’, which operated from Myitkyina, Burma also in 1944; both options being early turretless P-61As.
My choice will be the green/grey ‘Lady Gen’.
This airframe was flown by at least two crews during its operational service in Europe. The kit depicts the aircraft as it was when flown initially by Lt Robert A Smith and his crew from the 422nd NFS in the summer of 1944.
Lt Smith achieved an impressive kill record of 6 Luftwaffe aircraft, 5 locomotives and a V-1 Flying bomb.
Subsequently, it was flown by Capt. Leonard F Koehler who didn’t add any more kills to those already registered, due to the scarcity of available targets in the dying weeks of the war.
The Kit
This is GWH’s second aircraft model (if you count the two Fw189 variants as a single release) and has been just been followed by their newest release, the Devastator.
GWH have obviously listened to the criticism of the FW189 (having built and reviewed it, I’ve got to say it was a nice model and the issues were only minor in the big scheme of things) and tried to rectify them in this release.
The kit contains 9 main sprues and 4 minor sprues totalling a 150 parts, all moulded in crisp medium grey plastic. In addition to these, there are 2 clear plastic sprues, a PE fret with 32 pieces and a resin gun sight.
The instructions come as a full colour booklet that is printed on good quality paper with excellent detail and logical build sequence. There are also two amendment sheets included that firstly show the location of the resin gun sight and, secondly, cover the fact that weight will be required in the front section to stop the model from being a tail sitter.
The decals come on two sheets and, on first inspection, appear to be of good colour density, are in register and are reasonably thin with minimal carrier film.
Surface detail is crisp but refrained with finely moulded panel lines and rivet detail. The interior detail is again nicely done with sidewall detail and 3 grew positions included, along with a fully detailed radar for the nose.
The front and rear canopies are made up of several sections and the plastic is clear and undistorted.
I’ve also got to point out here that GWH have taken on-board the criticism about the oversizing of the canopy framing on their FW 189 and it is a lot more refined and in scale here.
What they haven’t got right though is the engine cowls. The openings on these are far too small and the engines are missing their magnetos on the front casings.
The propeller and spinners are also moulded as one piece, which is not great and will make the painting of these interesting.
The final obvious issue is that of the spoilerons and how to position these. The kit uses PE spoileron covers that are shown with the option of being open or closed, but they were rarely if ever seen in the open position on the ground and, if they ever were, the actual spoilerons that come out are not included anyway so the best option is to leave them shut.
One more word of warning is this kit only makes an early P-61A, as there is no dorsal turret included. You’ll have to wait for GWH’s next release for this version which should hopefully be available in the near future.
Overall, on first impressions, this is a massive leap over the now dated Monogram kit and looks like it will build into a very nice kit. As they say though, the proof is in the pudding, so let’s see if it lives up to its initial promise as we get on with building it.
