June 2025 - Part 2

Hawker Sea Fury

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Hawker Sea Fury FB.II

810 Naval Air Squadron, HMS CENTAUR, off Malta, 1955

FROG 1/72 with scratch decals

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Many people consider Sir Sidney Camm's Sea Fury to be THE ultimate piston engine fighter. Conceived during the final years of WW2, it was a typical Hawker design; robust, well thought out and highly capable. When it entered service in 1947, the utility of jet aircraft at sea was yet to reach a satisfactory level, but it was clear that the Sea Fury's days would be limited.

Nevertheless, its six years of front line service coincided with the Korean War, where Sea Furys operating from HM Ships GLORY, OCEAN, THESEUS and HMAS SYDNEY proved highly effective in the ground attack role. They also achieved a startling victory when 4 aircraft of 802 Sqn (Lts Carmichael & Davis, plus Sub Lts Haines & Ellis) shot down a Korean MiG 15 fighter that was attacking a mixed formation of Sea Furys and Fireflies.

The Sea Fury was steadily replaced by the jet powered Sea Hawk, with HMS CENTAUR landing 810 Sqn’s Sea Furys in Malta during 1954, to be replaced by Sea Hawks of 803 Sqn.

Only the RNVR Air Squadrons continued to operate the Sea Fury, for a further year before converting to the Supermarine Attacker.

Building the FROG Sea Fury

This was yet another purchase from Wonderland Model's Estate sale of second hand kits that they acquired when a former customer died. There were more than 3,000 in his "stash", apparently with none or at least few having ever been built. Perhaps a cautionary tale for some of us!

FROG's Sea Fury kit was first issued in 1963, continuing in production until 1976, then was re-issued by various eastern European companies up until the 1990s. Like most of the small FROGs from that era it is very simple, with a good shape but rather heavy details and some questionable fit around joints. Its wing fold option is very welcome, showing one of the key differences between the Sea Fury and its Fury/Tempest/Typhoon siblings. Tailplanes are in top and bottom parts, plus there are positionable elevators and ailerons, the latter being useful as they need to be deflected for the wing folded option.

Mine is a late boxed FROG original |(the box suggests 1976), in heavy dark blue plastic. It had a surprising amount of flash, albeit reasonably easy to remove, plus what appears to be some short-shot areas that needed filling. The canopy also had a lot of flash, but remained very clear.

Decals were very slightly yellowed, but still entirely usable 50 years after printing. Two options are offered, one that the painting instructions claim was flown by Lt Peter "Hoagy" Carmichael of 802 Squadron from HMS Ocean, who was credited with the downing of a jet MiG-15 over Korea in August 1952 (Carmichael emphasised that the entire flight took part and it was later suggested that the actual killing shot might have been fired by Sub Lt Brian Ellis).

However, the aircraft serial in the decals is VR943, and not WJ232 which was Carmichael's aircraft. It turns out that this airframe and the scheme portrayed were actually worn by an ex RCN Sea Fury, rebuilt and flown by a Mr Frank Sanders in the early 1970s and wearing the side number 232 in honour of the MiG-15 victory. The rebuilt 232 (incorporating parts from 4 airframes) became a well known Sea Fury Racer, winning several competitions before being converted into a highly modified and re-engined racing aircraft.

The second option is an aircraft of the Royal Canadian Navy, in 1951, with the slightly different 2-tone grey worn by RCN aircraft at that time. I've not checked, but I have to assume they got this one right!

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Assembly is straightforward, worthy of the "build in a day, fly round the room by teatime" philosophy that so many of us had as younger modellers. You really can't see into the cockpit, but I added a set of side panels just to busy things up. This is actually my 3rd FROG Sea Fury. The first was when I was bout 6 years old and my last build (a rather tatty post-FROG moulding in very brittle plastic) had to be built wheels up as the undercarriage parts were broken/missing. It also ended up as a gaudy “racer” repaint job for my daughter when I decided it was not up to the standard of the rest of my collection.

Sadly history has repeated itself here and this box also only contained one undercarriage leg, that was broken. Of course, this precluded any "wings folded" option so after some careful trimming I managed to get the outer wings to join the inner parts reasonably well. After all, that is what FROG stands are for and by good chance, the slot for the stand is pre-cut and hadn't yet been filled. Fortunately, FROG also provided a good pilot figure for this kit, so he was inserted to fill the cockpit.

The faux “display” colour scheme bugged me and despite the temptation to use the Canadian option, I decided to go for the original kit issue scheme, which has the same serial number but the side-number 105. In fact it seems FROG got this wrong too as the aircraft photo it seems to be based on is actually VR963, not VR943. Not difficult to change one number though so I duly started painting the Korean black and white stripes. For various reasons these quickly descended into chaos and after a week of trying to tidy them up, I surrendered and sanded them back to the base colour/plastic, then repainted the kit in the normal basic colours.

A quick peek into my pile of references brought a Mike Keep drawing of an aircraft from HMS CENTAUR in 1954, just before the Sea Fury was withdrawn from front-line squadrons. This aircraft has a red spinner, which adds a bit of colour to my Sea Fury collection! Simple decals for this were made up from various Modeldecal and part used kit sets.

This really is a very simple kit and definitely not one of my best, but the end result is still visually pleasing and I found the old FROG kit to be far better than I had remembered and a great blast of nostalgia - it definitely looks like a Sea Fury to me and reinforces in my mind its position as one of the most elegant piston-engined fighters ever built!

Below: A few Reference Pictures:

Background Image - A Sea Fury at the RNAS Yeovilton Air Show