Grandma's Finest Hour, the Blackburn Buccaneer in the 1991 Gulf War
1/48 Airfix kit#8100 HS Buccaneer S.2B. Well known to all Buc aficionados when the 1991 Gulf War commenced operations, the Lossiemouth Wing at Lossiemouth, Scotland deployed an initial batch of six Buccaneers to the Gulf for the purpose of providing laser-designation capability to the Tornado GR.1 force (that had no such capability). The S.2Bs received radio and IFF upgrades and were repainted in ARTF (Alkali Removable Temporary Finish) “desert pink”. An additional six were deployed within weeks and all twelve aircraft received names and artwork. Six received pinup style artwork on the starboard side and eleven received the famous “Jolly Roger” patchwork on the port side. All airframes also received the names of local malt whiskies made in Lossiemouth. XX885 “Hello sailor”, “Caroline”, and “Famous Grouse” is the subject of this build. This is the old tool 1/48 Airfix kit; it is notoriously problematic for many modelers often possessing severely warped fuselage halves and approximate fit in the engine intakes and exhaust areas requiring careful assembly, seam remediation, and contour correction. A new tool S.2B, is due from Airfix soon and will likely resolve the issues as did the recently released S.2C/D kit. Unfortunately, until the new tool S.2B is released the old kit is the only one providing the bulged bomb bay of the Buccaneer S.2B. The old uncolored Eduard photo etch cockpit set #48132 was installed and required careful hand painting. Once assembly was complete the model was primed with Tamiya acrylic X-1 Gloss black thinned 1:1 with traditional lacquer thinner. The ARTF desert pink applied to all the gulf Buccaneers was mixed from Tamiya acrylics followed by Future/Pledge clearcoat. Decals used are some of the kit decals and Kits World set KW148140 that provides decals for all six Bucs sporting the pin up nose art. These aircraft weathered heavily during the short deployment so weathering was done using Tamiya black, gray and brown panel liner, artist's oils, and pastels. The final clear coat is a mixture of Testors Dullcote and Glosscote lacquer thinned with Mr. Color Leveling Thinner.
Not an easy build due to the part warpage, unhelpful kit engineering, and the resultant need for seam and contour correction work but in the end an appealing model of the fastest subsonic low level attack bomber the Royal Navy ever flew.
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Awesome job, Stephen!
Congratulations!
Thanks, Spiros.
This is an amazing build with a fantastic paint job, Stephen!
Thank you! I saved a lot of time due to the absence of stencils!
Looks great, Stephen.
Superb build, Stephen @sofglock
A Buccaneer in this desert scheme looks great and your build clearly shows that.
Beauty mate, I have the 1:72 version to do at some stage.
The Bucc doing what it did when we were down there was ironic when you look at the reasons it ended up with the RAF.
They were one of the few RN aircraft capable of AAR and with their oil capacity should have been able to achieve the Black Buck missions with greater accuracy...of course the large carriers that carried them were binned based on the AMs insistence they could bomb anywhere which in part explains the last minute scramble to do the black Buck missions in the first place. Then we get the lack of organic AEW capability available to the task force. Originally with the Skyraider, then the Gannet, the radars end up stuck in Shacks horning round the North Sea. Fast forward 40 years and we are back with 2 large carriers and full capacity again...ah well. Fly Navy😆❤️
I don't have the 1/72 kit although I have a Printscale decal set for it. Looks like a outstanding kit.
Nice Buc! I really like the Op Granby scheme (did a Jaguar already) and plan to do a Buc - already have the decals for it in 1/72. Well done.
Very sharp. Nice work on this piece!
Excellent presentation and your humble approach to a difficult kit to build, (I have the Desert Storm/OP Granby boxing of this kit), though Airfix has plans to produce a new tooling S2b Buc, I still want to tackle the original version. Old school skills producing a quality model. Looks great the Desert Pink is pretty close. I hope I can get a similar result when I finally get to work on it. Thanks for sharing.