The History of scale aircraft modelling-Part 1 - Page 2

**wonwinglo** · 11-03-2005

The Lindbergh Starfire was an early model kit but not the first,dont forget we are talking about the first to appear in the UK I am not sure about Australia ? both Lindbergh,Hawk etc started to infiltrate the model distributors world wide in the fifties with some good models made from tough plastics,some of which was difficult to glue with conventional adhesives at that time.
By the way the Lindbergh F-94 kit was revamped later to include undercarriage,co-incidently this kit was made from the original Lincoln International moulding,but that is yet another story that we will cover some other time !

Kiwi · 11-03-2005

Australia!! What are you implying. Australia is the island 1200 mile off the coast of my fair land. As a country, Australia only has one geographical disadvantage - it's above sea level!

**wonwinglo** · 11-03-2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kiwi

Australia!! What are you implying. Australia is the island 1200 mile off the coast of my fair land. As a country, Australia only has one geographical disadvantage - it's above sea level!

*** Sorry Kiwi,what made me say Australia ? you live in a beautiful part of the world,a friend has just returned fron a trip to New Zealand visiting air museums.

**wonwinglo** · 12-03-2005

During the nineteen fifties a company called 'Kleeware' were producing domestic items plus a few toys in the United Kingdom,they had somehow obtained the moulds for a model of the Bell 47G skeletal boomed helicopter from America and produced it for the UK market,this appeared long before Airfix had even thought of marketing kits and was to make history as the very first injection moulded plastic kit to appear in the UK.(Note: the only other mouldings to appear just after the war were celluloid Frog Penguin's but these were entirely different in concept)
The model shown here which is a treasured part of my collection and amazingly survived all of these years despite several repaints ! only the side stretchers are missing which plugged over the undercarriage supports,the rotor head was a piece of steel and the whole thing came packaged in a rather spartan looking white & blue card box,despite its apparent crudeness it can lay claim to being a pioneer and must be looked at in the light of the day that it was made.
The Aeromodeller reported it straight away giving instructions on how to convert it to take two Jetex 50 motors lashed to a new set of rotors ! sheer sacrilage in my opinion and I wonder how many were destroyed in this way ? as the plastic would not stand up to any hard landings,the idea was no doubt a copy of the twin engined balsa model helicopter model marketed by Wilmot Mansiour who marketed the well known Jetex motors and kits of the day.
In a few years time from this a small injection moulding company based at Haldane Place in London were to change the whole concept of kits with a small model tractor contracted by a large manufacturer for publicity purposes.
Part 7 will deal with this story in detail.

**wonwinglo** · 12-03-2005

We have the dreaded 'X' again but it should appear soon as the server cycles,for those wishing to view the picture of the Kleeware Bell 47 go here- http://www.wonwinglo.scale-models.net/id45.htm

**wonwinglo** · 12-03-2005

How did Airfix a small plastic bucket manufacturer from Haldane Place,London get involved with model kits ? well in the fifties the tractor and agricultural manufacturers Massey Ferguson wanted some small models of their tractors to give away to clients,they contacted a plastic products manufacturer called Airfix who had some state of the art injection moulding equipment at their factory,their main business was supplying thousands of plastic buckets and other domestic equipment to F.W.Woolworths branches nationwide,at great speed they had the patterns made and supplied the tractors to M.F who were delighted,Airfix must have come to some agreement with Massey Ferguson as the small grey tractor models were placed into plastic bags with a paper header and sold them through Woolworths,the models sold out very quickly and the company realised that there was a market out there for kits that sold at the right price ie 2/- two old shillings ! it is said that Airfix took the moulds for their next model from an example marketed by Aurora of the Supermarine Spitfire,this model which had very thin wings with no aerofoil section was a non-descript mark of this famous aircraft built to 1=72nd scale,Airfix acquired huge stocks of pale blue plastic and injected millions of mouldings for this kit,Woolworhs set up special counters in their chain of shops and the model was a knock out from day one,quickly following were a Gloster Gladiator,Supermarine S.6B seaplane,Westland Sikorsky S-55 helicopter,Bristol Fighter,Sopwith Pup,R.E.8 and some small galleon kits plus some vintage cars to add to the range,as the months went on twin engined aircraft were added to the range Me.110,Bristol Beaufighter etc and then the long awaited Avro Lancaster was announced at a retail price of 7/6 seven shillinmgs and sixpence,however it never appeared on time and there were cries of broken moulds and manufacturing problems with this ambitious project for its day,but it did appear and was very quickly snapped up by modellers everywhere who wanted to add a Lancaster to their collections,this model was a revelation and feat of small scale mould making not known at that time,Airfix's success was due to the right product,at the right price and at the right time,in doing so they went onto becoming the largest manufacturer of model kits anywhere supplying up until that time only F.W.Woolworths,things were about to change however as no contracts to make Woolworths exclusive retailers of these kits were renewed,and kits were starting to appear in ordinary model shops everywhere as demand and sales increased twofold.The company expanded to new heights with a new factory quickly appearing to meet the demand as the range grew huge as the American market was targeted with respective kits for subjects for that country emerging,they did however make mistakes as the choice of a Fairey Rotadyne as a kit subject proved a failure,the brunt of the costs of production being taken by more popular subjects such as the constant demand for models of the Spitfire which was completely remoulded with new tooling that demanded a more accurate representation of a Spitfire.
The rest of this story is history itself and the outcome would fill a seperate book alone,but without doubt the company succeeded in making scale models available to the masses and to which a lot of modelling pleasure was derived,the eagerly awaited model of the TSR.2 will be released by Airfix this year 2005,they have come a long way since that small blue Spitfire kit that we all remember so well.
Part 8 will consolidate some of the subjects that we have covered here in this small piece of history in the making.

**wonwinglo** · 13-03-2005

Having covered the basic history we can now look a little deeper into some of the success stories,when kits & models first came out the scales were just all over the place,America favoured the larger 1=36th scale which made for large impressive models,so how did the popular 1=72nd scale we know of today originate ? well it was easy,James.Hay.Stevens just halved the scale and came up with the magic figure ! although the trend today is to build larger models mainly to incorporate the necessary scale detail demanded 1=72nd has dominated the scale scene for many years,people only have so much space and the desire to build up a collection whereby the models can be compared in size was also on the minds of the designer,so there we have it.
Although the contents of this set look well worn which they are,the kit of a Skybirds Westland Lysander is very rare,Skybirds were the inspiration of J.J.Halliday who introduced a range of models which went under the name of 'Givejoy' these were later marketed as the famous 'Skybirds' model kits.The kits had wooden carved and spindled parts,metal struts and fittings such as lead undercarriage spats in the case of the Lysander kit which was introduced around 1942,quite a late example of a Skybird and the only one in my collection.
Note that the plans were a blueprint,incidently the drawings were done by James.Hay.Stevens who as a schoolboy, Halliday realised his talents and paid him to produce the excellent plans,at the same time Stevens was having his drawings published in a pulp magazine called 'Air Stories' which had a special section at the rear for model makers,to go with the drawings was a complete article on how to build each model,this was further enhanced with beautifully executed pen and ink drawings,James.Hay.Stevens was later to become a respected author and aviation consultant in his own right doing articles on French aviation in the fifties and later owning his own fleet of vintage aircraft which included a DH.84 Dragon,Moth Minor,Leopard Moth,Percival Proctor and a Coupe version of the Tiger Moth,these aircraft were operated by a company called 'Chrisair' from Sywell airfield.
Skybirds also ran a thriving network of clubs scattered the length and breadth of the British Isles,the voicepiece for the club was in the back of the Aeromodeller magazine,the pages being supplied for free until new management stepped in and imposed a charge for same,this was not taken too kindly and as a result the clubs and Skybirds suffered gradually going into oblivion.
The thing which Skybirds did was to pre shape the parts which appealed to many people,you could even purchase models built up and painted for a considerable price above that of the basic sets which were beautifully strung into flat cardboard boxes like the one shown above.

**wonwinglo** · 14-03-2005

By direct contrast here is a selection of wartime wooden solid kits,note the wooden parts roughly cut to shape on a bandsaw,paint and glue were included together with in this case pot ( clay ) engine nacelles,stamped tinb propellers and turned wooden wheels,until plastic kits came onto the scene this is how you built your models,the basics were provided but you added the finishing touches.
The B-17 Flying Fortress is an Airyda kit and the Dornier 215 & short nosed Bristol Blenheim are made by a company called Airyda,We are looking here at a piece of aeromodelling history here that has survived.

It is hard to believe that once this is all that we had to build from,never before as today did we have the resources to produce such beautiful scale models given the parts and tools available.

The temptation has been there to build up some of these old kits however if I want to build one then I simply reproduce the parts from the plans in order to keep them in their original state,its fun and above all it reminds me of the way that we used to do things not that long ago.

The next part will illustrate some wartime accessories that showed great ingenuity.

**wonwinglo** · 15-03-2005

The ingenuity of the manufacturers to produce small scale parts from unusual materials in wartime was by circumstance,valuable metals and other raw materials were banned for toys and model manufacture so re-constituted early plastics known as Bakelite & beetle plastics were sometimes used,the cowlings in the above photograph were made from a clay substance,the tin cowlings are a work of art in themselves.To go with the kits clear plastic mouldings for canopies were produced in their thousands for those who did not have the skills to carve solid canopies from scrap aircraft perspex and polish them up with metal polish,ingenuity was the key word in the wartime conditions of make & mend as the air raid sirens wailed and you donned your gas mask.
The historical selection above is representative of what was available in the local model shop if they had any stock left ? it is interesting to compare these products with those produced today by the cottage industry that backs up the model kit companies with conversion add-ons and parts with greater detail.
Part 10 will deal with the kits produced post war as we went into the jet age.

**wonwinglo** · 16-03-2005

Whilst the fifties saw some interesting developments as the jet age gained momentum,and the Farnborough air show showed the progress with this form of flight,unfortunately model kits were still suffering from the lack of sophistication due to the clinging onto blocks of sawn wood as their wartime counterpart ! illustrated above are these last kits produced in this way before plastic models came along Veron superscale headed by Phil Smith with his Bournemouth based company produced these models en masse,band sawn timber with plastic wheels and small canopies made on simple moulds and a piece of thin ply for the undercarriage doors.
The kits carried on right up until the Airfix revolution and then sales dropped dramatically and they became history overnight.
So there you have it,what will the next generation of models produce ? well my prophecy is that tougher new materials will emerge,even now resin moulded models are being produced in large quantities from RTV moulds mostly at the moment by cottage industries,Corgi do the ready built metal diecast models,not quite scale modelling but obviously there must be a demand,will self assembly metal kits emerge ? yes I think that they will,these will be the future kits that you trim up with a file and stick with araldite or cyno,it has just got to happen,so one day someone else will be telling the story from here onwards,meanwhile I will continue like many others to enjoy the vast range of scale models that we have at out disposal,they will keep me going for a bit !