Everybody knows the Spitfire was THE British fighter of the Battle of Britain, it was in fact the Hurricane that bore the brunt of England's darkest hours. Some 60% of the RAF's fighter force was comprised of the venerable Hurricane which would in turn be credited with the majority of kills.

Even though considered outdated by the start of the war, the Hurricane would go on to serve in all theaters of war, with the RAF, RCAF, SAAF, USAAC, Indian Air Force and the RN. From England to Africa to the Burmese jungle, the Hurricane proved that it could still pack a deadly punch.

Hasegawa's 1/72nd scale kit is very nice, and shares the majority of its engineering with its larger 1/48th scale brother. All components (except the canopy) are molded in Hasegawa's typical medium grey plastic, and feature fine engraved details. The fabric work seems somewhat heavy (or pronounced) but within my tolerance level.

The kit assembles quite quickly, and on only needs to follow the instructions for the majority of assembly. In fact, the only place that I deviated from the instructions was in assembling the fuselage halves. Rather than gluing the aft (main) fuselage halves together and the engine halves together and then mating both assemblies, I chose to mate the engine halves to the appropriate fuselage half, using a flat board as a backing, and then gluing the completed halves together. This will eliminate most (if not all) fit problems in this area.

For the most part, Hasegawa has gotten everything correct with their kit. However, because they share the wing with the remainder of their Hurricane line, there's a small modification needed. Using your favorite filler, fill and smooth the outer wing gun locations. On the wing's upper surface there's access panels and on the underside there's the shell ejector slots. These are only used on the twelve gun Mk.Iis (and later variants).

The underside of the model was airbrushed with Polly Scale's acrylic British Sky Type 'S' and allowed to dry before masking. The upper surfaces were then painted British Dark Green, again using Polly Scale acrylics before British Dark Earth was applied using paper masks.

A coat of Future floor wax as a gloss coat, and it was time for decals. Many people complain about Hasegawa's typical, thick decals, I however have never had problems with them. All decals responded well to Gunze's Mr. Marksofter decal set. A coat of Polly Scale's Clear Flat and painting was done.

I used a wash of brown artist's acrylics to highlight the panel lines (see my article for a more in depth description) and a light airbrushing of "grimy black" for the exhaust and gun stains and weathering was complete.

With everything painted and weathered, I glued the horizontal tails, landing gear and propeller in place. Add an aerial antenna from invisible thread and my Hurricane was complete.

This was an enjoyable model to build, being quick and easy, with no surprises. In fact, I only spent somewhere around four hours building this kit and another three hours painting, decaling and weathering. I can honestly recommend this kit to anybody with more that one kit under their belt.