LCVP kit now available.

Good news! I'm a big, longtime fan of Airfix kits. They may not operate on quite the detail level of the Japanese firms, but Airfix has been responsible for introducing millions of people to the hobby over the decades.

I just checked out the Airfix website (<www.airfix.com>), and sure enough there's an LCVP in all its glory. The kit apparently contains 80+ parts; that should be enough to do a good job with the subject. Looks like wuwinglow is lucky to have one; the website lists it as "awaiting stock."

Fortunately there's no shortage of 1/72 scale figures and vehicles that would go well with an LCVP - particularly if you're willing to tolerate the soft plastic variety. This looks like a fun, worthwhile kit. If I'm not mistaken, Airfix also makes (or at least used to make) an LCM, packaged with a Sherman tank. That's an oldie; I don't know whether it's still available or not.

Here is an edited version of a 'first sight' review that I wrote for the Airfix website at the beginning of the month.

Non- Brits may not be familiar with the BBC children's TV characters, the Teletubbies, whose names are Tinky-Winky, Dipsey, Laa-Laa and Po . They are plump, rounded humanoids, who have television aeriels sticking out of their heads, and TV screens on their bellies.

And the Rita referred to in the comments about decals is the supremely efficient lady who runs the Airfix spares and replacement parts service.


1)

The new LCVP appears to be crewed by La-La, Tinky-Winky and Po! To add authenticity, they each have a sink mark where their TV screens should be! The overall quality of moulding is similar to Matchbox in the early 1970s. What's going on? Is it really necessary to make so many sacrifices to meet the £3.99 price-point?

Nice subject, though, with good rolled-steel texture on the hull plates (though this may be an accidental consequence of the early-1970s Matchbox moulding quality overall!).


2)

1/72 LCVP ‘Higgins Boat’ – first glance review

A Higgins Boat! From Airfix! And only £3.99! My cup runneth over!

Well, up to a point, Lord Copper….


What do you get?

4 sprues of standard Airfix-grey polystyrene, containing 83 parts make up the model. You also get a length of fine white thread, a decal sheet, thankfully mostly of white stencils, an extensive instruction sheet in the ‘new Heller’ style, in which the names of the Humbrol paints are given, not just the numbers!, and a missing parts slip. Of these parts, 26 go to make up beach obstacles, which will be useful for dioramas and for wargamers.


Construction

The boat itself is made up of a one-piece hull, into which is placed a one-piece well deck and the after bulkhead. Onto the after part of the well deck are cemented an engine cover/ coxswain’s station and a forward bulkhead. Thwarts are then fitted port and starboard to the weather deck, which, in turn, is then cemented in place on top of the hull, and the 3-part ramp is then fixed in either the open or closed position at the bow. This completes main assembly.

Before you get to this stage, however, you will have spent a happy couple of evenings removing flash, cleaning up mould separation lines, filling ejector pin marks and sink marks, with which the parts abound, and removing and cleaning up ejector –pin towers. And this on a kit which has been on the market for barely a month! I shudder to think what the moulds will be like in 5 years’ time.

Now, how are your scratch-building skills? Do you have a good stock of plastic strip, plastic card in thicknesses up to 80 thou, Plastruct U-channel stock, brass rod, and some Billings small-scale ships fittings?

The reason I ask these questions is because all the small ship’s fittings are so crude, so badly-moulded, and /or so over-scale as to be unusable. Perhaps, for the wargamer/ kiddies’ toy market (with the front ramp cemented shut, the thing should float in the bath) at whom the model appears to be aimed (I’d hate to think that Airfix really think that mouldings of this quality are appropriate for a model aimed at the ‘serious modeller’ market) this is not a problem, since the target market won’t worry about the complete lack of finesse in the detail parts.

Serious modellers, however will wish (no, will have) to rebuild all the detail parts (and some not-so-detail parts, such as the keel, rudder, prop-shaft and display stand0 from scratch. The good news is that, apart from the cleats, they are all fairly simple shapes and easy to fabricate from the sort of materials which most of us will have readily to hand. Don’t, however, simply copy the ship’s fittings provided, since many of them appear to be seriously over-scale.

You will also need a good source of white metal 50 calibre machine guns and ammo boxes, since the things supplied with the kit bear a rather closer resemblance to high-pressure water squirters than something which might be used to dissuade marauding Messerschmitts and Zeros. There again, you could simply leave the guns off, and model a landing craft operating in a rear echelon area.


Painting and Decals

Two options, both for LCVPs used on the US sectors of the Normandy landing beaches, and both the same colour scheme.

Airfix carefully match the colours used in the original to their colour recommendations on their instruction sheets. They never simply use the nearest approximate equivalent in the Humbrol paint range. We know this to be true, because Mr. Snowdon has said this (or words to that effect) in ‘Ask Trev’ (a feature on the Airfix website where members of the Airfix modelling clubs can ask questions of Trevor Snowdon, the Airfix product development manager).

So, in the Second World War, the US Navy painted their LCVPs satin light ghost grey, and RLM 70 Schwartzgrun below the waterline. Yeah, right. Time to do some research, lads.

Decals. White stencils. Surely, even Airfix can’t mess up white stencils? No, but those of nervous disposition might not want to see what they can do to the Star-Spangled Banner! Rita will be busy, methinks.

Oh, yes, and remember, when you paint the crew, Po is red, Tinky-Winky is blue, Dipsy is green and Laa-Laa is yellow.


Conclusion

It’s an injection-moulded LCVP in 1/72, from Airfix, for only £3.99. Sure, the details are crude, but they’re easy to fix. Sure, the colour call-outs are a bit dubious, but we can all do research, can’t we? And you were never going to use the kit decals for the Star-Spangled Banner, were you?

3)
More good news:

I've just done a test-fit of the major components, and am happy to report that there are no major issues. The after bulkhead is a little too wide - 10 seconds work with a file to correct, and the weather deck appears to be about 1mm too short, so that's a minute's work with some plastic strip. You might want to replace the platforms attached to the after bulkhead that the machine gunners stand on. These are moulded as slightly tapering, but should be flat. Easy enough to replace with 20 thou pc, but you won't be able to see that the platforms are tapering when the model is complete, so why bother?


4)

I've just been looking at pictures of LCVPs on the web. Whoever did the research for this kit goofed. Higgins boats' hulls were made of wood, not steel, so the cast metal texture is inappropriate, even if it was intentional. The panel lines on the hull will have to go, too. Out with the Tippex and 600 and 1200-grade wet & dry, lads!

Also, the cleats are an entirely different design to that provided in the kit, and the gunners' cockpits could be covered over, so you don't have to use the squirty things.

Some good pictures here:

insidelst.com/ lcvp1.jpg

and here:

http://www.higginsboat.org

Chris.

Teletubbies???

QUOTE: The new LCVP appears to be crewed by La-La, Tinky-Winky and Po! To add authenticity, they each have a sink mark where their TV screens should be!

WHERE??? is there a picture?
sure I'd like to see it!

I haven't seen the kit, but on the basis of Mr. Hall's review I wonder if it's perhaps a '60s-vintage product that for some reason didn't get released at that time. It certainly doesn't sound like it comes up to the standards Airfix has been achieving with its aircraft lately - or, for that matter, with its more recent (i.e., only 20-year-old) warships. Long ago Airfix demonstrated some interest in amphibious craft; they did an LCM (with a Sherman tank) and an AMTRAK (Buffalo in UK parlance) with a jeep. I wonder if this "new" LCVP was designed at that time.

A source of improved parts might be the old Revell PT-109. It has machine guns and, if memory serves, some pretty nice figures - complete with life jackets. If I remember right, the gunners have separate pieces for arms, though at least one of the poor gents is amputated at the waist.

Regarding the "steel" texture - the LCVP plans from Floating Drydock show a couple of steel sheets fastened to the sides as "armor plating." I suspect those plates weren't present on all Higgins boats, but I trust Mr. Walkowiak's research.

I believe some (I'm not dumb enough to say "all") LCVPs were fitted with .30-caliber machine guns, rather than .50s. My father asserted that the ones on board his ship had their gun tubs covered with plywood; he never saw a machine gun fitted to an LCVP. His ship (Bollinger, APA-234) got to most of the famous sites of the Pacific war (Samar, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, etc.), but always after the issues had been settled. (She reached Okinawa the day after the last of the Kamikaze attacks.)

On the basis of Mr. Hall's review I think I want the kit - and I'll plan on spending some time on it.

Hi, jtilley! No, the thing was produced this year, presumably to take advantage of the marketing opportunities of the 60th anniversary of D-day. It's a Heller design - in fact, all the genuinely new Airfix stuff this year - the LCVP, the Jeep, the Deuce-and-a-half, the 1/72 Concorde and the 1/600 Queen Mary 2 - are Heller designs. Heller have never really achieved the standards of Airfix in the late 1990s - somethng to do with the moulds for the Airfix Spitfire F.22/24 Seafire F.47, and the Lightnings being produced in South Korea, while all the Heller moulds are still produced in France. Notable that the standard of the Airfix 1/48 Hawk, whose mould was also produced in France, was much lower than the previous 2 aircraft.

BTW, it seems that it was common for LCVPs operating in rear echelon areas, where the Allies already had air supremacy, to operate unarmed, and with their gun tubs covered over. Less chance of blue-on-blue that way, I suppose.

Chris.

I saw the boat advertised on the Heller site. Was hoping for a bit better kit but the price will help me get that landing dio going. Once you fill them with troops and put it in water, you won't see too much of the details anyway.