Italeri 1/48 Hawk T.Mk.1 Kit First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

In the mid-1960s, the RAF was looking for a new generation of advanced training aircraft that would replace the venerable Folland Gnat and the two-seat Hawker Hunters. Hawker Siddeley developed the model 1182 which was officially dubbed 'Hawk' by the RAF. During the aircraft's development, Hawker Siddeley was one of several companies merged to create British Aerospace in 1977, which later merged with Marconi Electronic Systems to become today's BAE Systems.

This rugged tandem-seat subsonic trainer is powered by a 6500 pound thrust turbofan engine which allows the aircraft to sustain Mach 0.8 in level flight and can safely achieve Mach 1.15 in a dive.

Initially roled as an advanced trainer, the Hawk provides the student pilot with their first pure-turbine flight time before advancing on to high-performance (supersonic) types. The Hawk turned out to be a versatile airframe that could accommodate weapons stores for training as well as serving as an inexpensive lightweight combat aircraft. In RAF service, these armed trainers could carry a pair of Sidewinder missiles and a centerline gunpod which would have been used as an augmentation point-defense fighter to accompany the Tornado F.3 in wartime.

Since the time it was first rolled out as a pure trainer, the Hawk has been developed into a variety of single-seat and two-seat combat aircraft, and one variant is even capable of aircraft carrier flight operations as the US Navy's T-45 Goshawk.

Italeri has developed a nice new-tool rendering of the BAE Hawk in 1/48 scale. The kit is molded in light gray styrene and presented on four parts trees, plus a single tree of clear parts and a single fret of photo-etched parts.

The cockpit is a step up from the usual Spartan interiors found in Italeri kits. The kit provides some decent ejection seats which are enhanced with photo-etched seatbelts and shoulder harnesses. The side consoles can be either rendered with decal details, or you can use the photo-etched side console overlays and apply a different set of decals to align with the relief details on the photo-etched surfaces.

The instrument panels can also be rendered with pure decals, or use a different set of decals for the instrument faces that will be overlaid with the photo-etched instrument panels. Interesting approach.

Among the features and options in this kit:

• Choice of instrument panels and side consoles
• Positionable canopy
• Photo-etched mirrors for the canopy
• Positionable wing flaps
• Positionable stabilators
• Positionable rudder
• Positionable ventral speed brake
• Weighted wheels
• 2 x AIM-9 Sidewinders
• 2 x Sidewinder launch rails on stations 1 and 3
• 2 x external tanks for stations 1 and 3
• Gunpod on centerline station 2

The kit decals provide five options:

• Hawk T.Mk.1, XX247, 7th Flying School, Chivenor, RAF, 1992
• Hawk T.Mk.1, XX226, 4th FTS, Valley, RAF, 2001
• Hawk T.Mk.1, XX245, RNAS, FRADU, Yeovilton, 1998
• Hawk T.Mk.1, XX256, 2nd Tactical Weapons Unit, Chivenor, RAF, 1981
• Hawk Mk.66, U-1269, Swiss AF Fligerschule, Emmen, 1992

The decals are printed by Cartograf and my example is in perfect register. This set provides five distinctive examples and I hope that the aftermarket folks will provide some other international Hawk schemes that are in service.

Italeri did a nice job with this kit and it looks like a very straightforward build. I hope that we might see some aftermarket noses to render some of the different fighter variants of this distinctive aircraft. How about a nice conversion for the T-45?