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Airfix Kit Figures - Airfield Control Tower

Set 4017 and 03380-8 and A03380

Click for larger image
This is one of Airfix’s older kits, and pre-dates most of their 'OO/HO' figure sets. Early literature that goes with the kit states that the design is based (quite loosely apparently) on examples built during World War II, and allegedly still in use when the kit was made in the late 1950s/early 1960s. So clearly intended to be for the War and later, it comes with three figures ('duty crew') as shown. The first is of an officer looking through a pair of binoculars, and he wears standard Service Dress with a peaked cap, shirt and tie. This is appropriate for the whole of the War and beyond, and has been correctly done here. The second man is seated in the observation room and is using a telephone. He too is wearing normal Service Dress but without any form of headwear. Finally we have a figure standing holding something to his face. Our best guess is this is a signal lamp, which was for communicating with the pilots in their cockpits, although Aldis lamps were used for this purpose and this looks nothing like an Aldis lamp. Whatever he is doing, he wears the RAF equivalent of the Army's battledress, called War Service Dress, which was introduced in 1943 and has been well done here.

Despite being well over half a century old, these figures are very nice sculpts, and certainly a great deal better than many of the figure sets Airfix would make much later. The simple uniforms are well detailed and the proportions are good. There is a fair amount of flash however, and all suffer from large mould marks on their backs, while our relatively modern production also had some sink holes.

All these figures seem very appropriate for the task, although uses outside of the control tower are likely to be very limited.

This is one of those products that came and went over the years, but most of the time only the box artwork was used for the catalogues. The only time that an actual photo of the model was used was in the very early catalogues - it appears in the very first edition, dated 1962 - and for some reason that does not show the figures.

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