Short history

In 1959, the first helicopter unit (Primo Gruppo Elicotteri) of the Italian Navy, received the first 3 HSS-1 Seabat helicopters and some year after, others 11 HSS-1N ASW version, with modified undercarriage, sonar and able to the nocturnal flight.

In  the autumn of 1964, an hurricane pulled down on airport of Catania (Sicily), base of the First Group, destroyed 6 of the 14 Seabat, the remaining helicopters will come employ in various roles; the antisubmarine warfare, search and rescue and the crews training.

Towards the end of the 70th, the survivors Seabat, considered obsolete, will be assigned to training roles and to naval operations support until their definitive retire from service in 1978.

The helicopter that I have reproduced, was one of the last ones to being retired from service, and is placed on the flight deck of the support ship “Bafile” (former HSS Saint Gorge), used for the transport of the Italians marines of the San Marco Battalion during a landing operations on the beach of the Sardinia in the summer of the 71.

The kit

To built my HSS-1N Seabat I have used the Italeri kit in 72nd scale.

Moulded in deep blue plastic, the kit have quite good detail, finely recessed panel lines and reproduce a good copy of the original one.

The box contains the pieces to realize the HSS-1 and the version with modified landing gear legs undercarriage HSS-1N.

In adding to the kit, I have bought a beautiful etched metal set from Part (S72-023) that it supplies the main intake and cooling air grills and a lot of others external details.  Finally, to realize the Italian Navy version, I have used two decals sheets from Tauromodel (72-542 and 72-557 Italian helicopters).  

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Construction

I have been always fascinated from the carried helicopters showing the tail and the blades of the rotor folded, therefore , the temptation has been too much strong and after to have collected some books and photos about the Seabat, I have started to work.

I have begun to separate the tail pylon, in order to fold the two parts, I have realized the two bulkheads with the structural reinforcement and have reconstructed the part of fuselage that exceeded outside with a thin styrene strip, I have replaced the folding joint mechanism with the new etched ones, finally I have added the handlholds for the tail folding and some small tubes and electric cables.

Using some small parts of a clock, I have reproduced the joint gear of the tail rotor.

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I have detailed the original cockpit adding some instrument panels, push-buttons and switches. 

An other hard job has been the substitution of all the air intake grills with the photoeched new one’s, especially for the big engine air inlet grill that I have had to cut in more parts to compensate the remarkable curving of fuselage nose.

Continuing to detail the outside of the fuselage and following the photos to my disposition, I’ve added some tubes, handholds, the fuel tank filler caps, the aft-sliding cabin door and the doppler radar antenna.

I’ve scratchbuilt the rescue hoist and its mounting frame, the triple pipe exhaust system using different brass tubes.

The landing gear legs from the kit appeared too much thick, so I have replaced, scratchbuilting them with brass tubes of various diameter.

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A large engagement has demanded the folding mechanism of the blades of the main rotor, every blade was hinged on the both side of its attachment fitting with the rotor’s sleeve and could be folded along the fuselage only removing the connection hinge.

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I have painted the fuselage using as color base  the Gunze H-333 Extra Dark Sea Gray, the nose with a base coat of Tamiya Gloss Red and with a over sprayed coat of  Testors Red Day Glo.

After to have sealed the model with a coat of Gunze gloss clear varnish, I let it dry and I’ve  filled all the panel lines with black sepia oil color, the excess of color was wiped off with a very lightly damped cloth.

The second step was to spray over different coats of  thinned Gunze H-333 Extra Dark Sea Gray, more lighter in the center of every panel and darker on sides to reproduce the various shades.

The decals where then applied, using carefully the Gunze Mr. Mark Softer (the Tauro decals are very good but also very thin).

Once the decals had set, the model was sealed with a coat of mixed Gunze Clear and gloss clear varnish until catching up a semi-gloss finish. 

The final touch has been a light drybrush with a mixture of grey and azure oil paint to exalt the raised details.

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Diorama

To represent realistically the model, I have built one small part of the flight deck of the support ship “Bafile”.

The base of the diorama is made of plywood, bulkheads were constructed with styrene sheet and scribed to simulate welding marks. The deck is made with a thinner, 1.5mm plywood sheet, again scribed to simulate the planking and to complete the work, I have added some other small details like cleats, hooks and eyelets, stolen from the box of the naval models detail parts of my dad.

Sebastiano

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Reference

Gli Elicotteri della Marina – Rivista marittima Roma 1981

H-34 Choctaw in action – Squadron signal n.146

Westland Wessex – 4Plus Publication

Links

The one of the best walkaround about the “Seabat” on the web:

http://www.b-domke.de/AviationImages/Seabat.html

The Randy Smith walkarounds on ARC:

http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/AWA1/401-500/walk425_H-34A_Smith/walk425.htm

http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/AWA1/401-500/walk457_VH-34_Smith/walk457a.htm

http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/AWA1/401-500/walk457_VH-34_Smith/walk457b.htm

http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/AWA1/401-500/walk410_H-34_Smith/walk410.htm

http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/AWA1/101-200/walk174_H-34/part3/walk174c.htm