Maritime Strike with the Fleet Air Arm

If you want to model a Buccaneer in 1/72nd scale then you need look no further than Airfix.

Airfix offer a 1-in-3 Buccaneer model set and the options include a Royal Navy S.2D, a Royal Air Force S.2B and a South African Air Force S.Mk.50. Now the kit is certainly not perfect; there’s quite a few fit issues throughout as well as a mixture of engraved and raised panel lines but on the upside there’s also quite a few weapons options within.

These weapons options include two 1000lb laser guided bombs (British variants), an ALQ-101 ECM pod, a Pave Spike laser designator, an AIM-9 Sidewinder, four Matra SNEB rocket pods and four external fuel tanks; two British and two South African. There’s also four missiles in the kit that are not mentioned in the instructions; these come from an older iteration of the kit and can be built in different ways. The missile options allow for either four Sea Eagle anti-ship missiles, four T.V guided Martel anti-ship missiles or four Martel radar guided missiles. I guarantee you would have a hard time tracking down those missiles elsewhere; the Sea Eagles are quite a bonus as they have been fitted to both Harriers and Jaguars during their respective careers.

I’ve put a copy of the old build instructions for the missiles on the Resources page of the blog.

I started building this kit back in March and entered it into a Campaign Build on Aeroscale, the Anti-Shipping Campaign. The picture above of the Buccaneer beside a Harrier GR.5 gives an indication of how tall and wide a Buccaneer is; you might also notice filler around the tail. As I said above this kit isn’t perfect and neither the joining of the fuselage halves nor the joining of the tail to the fuselage were without problems. Similar problems cropped up when attaching the wings as well.

This picture better explains the problem; towards the front of the fuselage there is raised lines that need sanded and towards the rear of the fuselage there are gaps that need filling. The gap between the tail and the fuselage need a lot of filler as well.

The join between the fuselage and the nosecone was another problem requiring a lot of sanding and filling. At the rear of the aircraft there is a large airbrake and the fit of that was; quite frankly, terrible. It required an excessive amount of sanding and filling, so much in fact that I never quite finished getting it perfect but I did make it look like it fit properly.

Early on in their Royal Navy career the Buccaneers wore a camouflage scheme of Extra Dark Sea Grey on top and White underneath, both gloss. Later in their career the camouflage scheme changed to an overall gloss Extra Dark Sea Grey which is the scheme I chose to recreate.

The kit was painted with Revell Aqua Color Greyish Blue which is a pretty good match for Extra Dark Sea Grey. The Revell Aqua Color range is a great range of acrylic paints and, I can vouch for this myself, with a bit of water they can be hand-painted with ease. I should mention I do all of my painting, beside priming, by hand. I have neither the money nor the space for an airbrush – compressor setup.

I decided early on in the project that I wanted to put the Buccaneer on a flying stand to give it a more dynamic look and feel.

The stand in the picture on the left comes from an Italeri set and is very sturdy; the curved arm attaches to the base via a small screw. The stand is perfect for large and heavy aircraft.

To fix the Buccaneer to the stand I first bored two holes into its bomb bay and I made sure the holes were at about the centre of the aircraft to ensure it remained balanced. Then I took the part of stand which fits over the white swivel head in the picture and slotted it into the bored holes. I had to glue this piece down to keep it slipping out of the Buccaneer and I also had to be careful not to put sideways pressure on it; during construction I accidentally dropped the aircraft and had to repair that particular piece because of a small breakage. Model kits and floors were never meant to meet, especially at speed.

As you can see the Buccaneer really does look impressive when on a flying stand. Now, not long after this picture was taken I finished up painting the Buccaneer and then applied one coat of Vallejo Gloss Varnish. One coat is all I needed as that stuff works a treat and produces a nice gloss coat easily.

After allowing the gloss coat to dry overnight I set about applying the decals. I’ve heard that Airfix decals can be a bit hit and miss at times but I had absolutely no trouble with these; I used Vallejo Decal Set and Decal Fix, setting and softening solutions, as aids though. The decals were followed by a second coat of gloss varnish and because the Buccaneers wore a gloss paint coat I only matte coated small areas such as exhausts.

I had a lot of fun adding the decals to the Buccaneer. I did find it a bit nerve wracking though and I didn’t add all of them. I left many of the smaller decals off but I doubt many people would notice and it doesn’t bother me much anyway.

Because I was entering the Buccaneer into a anti-shipping themed campaign I decided on arming it with a television guided Martel anti-ship missile. The white pod you can see in the picture above is a Data Acquisition Pod which works in conjunction with T.V Martels. For a reason I no longer remember it was necessary for the pod to be mounted backwards. The T.V Martel was the anti-shipping weapon of choice for the Royal Navy and RAF until the 1980’s when the Sea Eagle came into service. The Sea Eagle is a fire and forget missile with over four times the range of the Martel.

I only added the one T.V Martel to the Buccaneer and left the other two pylons free. I gleamed a lot of information about the Buccaneer and particular weapons options from the website blackburn-buccaneer.co.uk which is an amazing website filled with every piece of information about the Buccaneer you could possibly want.

Throughout the build I kept putting off work on the cockpit because; unfortunately, it came with decals for consoles. I don’t like decals in the cockpit because I find it a tight and awkward area to work in and besides if the consoles are moulded plastic then I have the opportunity to paint them in a more attractive and interesting manner than they would be appear realistically. I always claim ‘artistic license’ when it comes to the cockpit.

Unfortunately decaling the cockpit was nothing short of a disaster and after a couple of failed attempts and damaged decals I decided it best be left alone. I did add the two pilots that came with the kit; though, in order keep it looking busy rather than bare. Since then I’ve painted all of my pilots in the same fashion as those in the Buccaneer and I’ve grown to like the generic Airfix pilots for that reason.

My ‘Achilles Heel’ when it comes to any aircraft is the canopy and the Buccaneer was no different. I started out by applying liquid mask on the clear areas and then; rather foolishly, I primed the entire canopy. After I had finished painting the frames, inside and out, I began peeling back the liquid mask only to find it had reacted with the primer and become flaky. Soon my frames were Extra Dark Sea Grey speckled with white flakes that I couldn’t get off easily. To make matters worse I couldn’t remove the liquid mask from the inside of the canopy.

To make a long story short the canopy was completely ruined. So I quickly went out and bought a second Airfix kit and I swapped the canopies. It wasn’t a total loss; I now have a second Buccaneer to build sometime which I’ll do up as a Gulf War Buccaneer S.2B. I’ll also be using the age-old modelling trick of hiding the canopy under a tarp. After all under the hot Middle Eastern sun you would want to keep the cockpit cool before the flight crew gets in, right?

The Buccaneer S.2D was finished just in time for the campaign deadline on Aeroscale and netted me a nice reward ribbon for my profile; that’s a neat feature on Aeroscale and its sister sites, well worth checking out.

It now resides on the top shelf of my display case as the first model aircraft I ever finished and the Blackburn Buccaneer has become one of my favourite aircraft in the process. One of these days I’ll be adding an RAF Buccaneer S.2B to the collection and; you never know, I might even be persuaded to do a SAAF Buccaneer S.Mk.50 one day as well.

The Blackburn Buccaneer: A Brief History

British military aviation during the Cold War was certainly impressive with many a beautiful and interesting an aircraft produced; both the Sea Vixen and the Sea Venom are a testament to the fact.

However there was one aircraft produced during the long war that was not only aesthetically brilliant but was so versatile and capable that it went on to serve for 30 years; the Blackburn Buccaneer.

The Buccaneer was designed specifically to combat Soviet fleet deployments which at the time had become quite a dangerous prospect for the Royal Navy. Requirement specifications called for the Buccaneer to fly at a height of 200 feet above the sea, below ship-borne radar, and deliver a mix of conventional and nuclear weaponry against the enemy fleet.

The Buccaneer S.Mk.1 entered service with the Royal Navy in 1962 and quickly became popular with crews. Underpowered engines troubled the new jet; however, causing take-off issues in certain weather conditions. Due to these engine troubles an uprated version of the Buccaneer, the S.Mk.2, was developed and entered service in 1964.

The Buccaneer would serve with the Fleet Air Arm for another 12 years until 1978 when the HMS Ark Royal was decommissioned ending fixed-wing aircraft service with the Royal Navy.

Notable events during its career include ‘Gunboat Diplomacy’ flights over Honduras successfully discouraging Guatemala from invading its neighbour after it gained independence. Buccaneers also bombed the shipwrecked oil tanker ‘Torey Canyon’ to ignite its cargo and prevent a major oil spill off the British coastline.

It was with the Royal Air Force that the Buccaneer would enjoy a long career. After the TSR-2 project was scrapped and the F-111K project was cancelled due to cost escalations the Royal Air Force was in an awkward position with no modern aircraft on the horizon which; as you can imagine, was a very undesirable situation during the Cold War.

In 1968 the RAF were offered the Buccaneer S.Mk.2B (S.2B in shorthand) which satisfied their needs. In RAF service the Buccaneer would provide both a land strike role and a nuclear weapon delivery role to which the aircraft was perfectly suited.

Now, if there was ever any concern in the United States military over the capabilities of British aircraft or their pilot training then the 1977 Red Flag exercise must have astounded them. Despite a lack of terrain following radar or modern avionics the Buccaneers skimmed the desert floor at a mere 50 feet, breached enemy air defences and hit their targets. In air-to-air trials the Buccaneers, fitted with the AIM-9 Sidewinder, scored many a kill on their American counterparts. It was also at Red Flag that the RAF began experimenting with the Buccaneer and laser guided bombs, something which would pay off in the future.

It wasn’t all a success for the Buccaneer however. In 1980 during a Red Flag exercise a Buccaneer crashed causing the death of its crew. The entire fleet was grounded pending an investigation which found severe metal fatigue surrounding the front wings which could’ve lead to potential failure as happened at Red Flag. Out of the 90 available aircraft only 60 were selected to undergo repairs and a squadron was disbanded in the process.

By the early 80’s the Panavia Tornado began coming into service with the RAF and took over land strike duties from the Buccaneer. The Buccaneer still had a role to play; however, and continued on with maritime strike duties. In this role it would be fitted with the powerful Sea Eagle anti-ship missile which could be considered the British equivalent to the French Exocet and the American Harpoon missiles.

The Tornado was never quite as popular with its crews compared with the Buccaneer; it had less range and it didn’t offer as smooth a ride at low levels. During Operation Desert Storm the RAF lost several Tornados during low level attack runs; Iraqi anti-air defences were stronger than anticipated. A decision was made to switch to higher level precision bombing but the Tornado was only wired for the TIALD pod and the RAF only had two at the time.

Twelve Buccaneers joined the operation, fitted with Pave Spike laser designator pods, and flew ahead of the Tornados designating targets. Initially they did only that; designating for other aircraft, but soon were fitted with laser guided bombs themselves and throughout their participation they dropped 48 LBG’s.

Sadly this would be the last notable actions for the Buccaneer fleet and in 1994 they were decommissioned from service after giving a good 30 years to the British military.

The only other military service to operate the Buccaneer was the South African Air Force which operated the S.Mk.50 variant from 1965 to 1991. With the SAAF the Buccaneer would be involved in Border War as well as regional conflicts.

Having stayed in service for over 30 years and having proven invaluable during modern conflicts such as the Gulf War, despite its age, I can only conclude that the Blackburn Buccaneer is one spectacular aircraft and certainly one of my favourite Cold War era jets.