When Italeri began producing new 1/72 helicopter kits back in the mid 1990’s, I began snatching up quite a collection of rotor wing aircraft. This kit is the most recent addition to my helo collection and the newest addition to my display cabinet. It’s a UH-34D Sea Horse as used by the U.S. Marines in Vietnam back in the early 1960’s. The UH-34 was also used by the U.S. Army (where it was called “Choctaw”), the U.S. Navy (with that service calling it the Sea Bat), and a score of other nations military services.

 The Italeri kit comes molded in dark green plastic which I find to be quite nice to work with. It has engraved panel lines that are a bit deep, but look fine under a coat of paint. The kit comes with a choice of four marking schemes, the U.S. Marine version (the subject of this entry), a German army version, and two French military versions (one is a really nice looking overall dark blue scheme that I just may have to do someday). Detail in the main cabin where the passengers and crew sit is very nicely done. There are canvas seats with webbed seat backs, detailed front and rear bulkheads, and a choice of three different door guns. The cockpit is alright, but not stellar. The seats are tricky to assemble, there is no collective included (why this is missing from almost all 1/72 helos remains a mystery to me?) and the instruments are really poor. This is almost one instance where I wish Italeri would have provided decals for the main and side instrument panels as they would have been more acceptable then the over-scale, circle, square, and rectangle shapes that are supposed to be the flight instruments. A really neat feature of all the “newer” Italeri helicopter kits is the molded-in “sag” of the main rotor. This really makes the kit come alive and look natural when sitting in the display cabinet.

Assembly is pretty much straight forward but dry fitting is certainly the order of the day with Italeri helicopter kits. The builder needs to make sure that he/she adds or deletes the necessary bits and pieces for the version that they are building (including a choice of nose engine door for the port side). I would suggest cutting off the locating pins for the main fuselage assembly. This allows you to get the best fit possible but I still needed to use some gap filling super glue and even had to break out the Squadron White Putty in a few spots. Good reference material is another essential item when building Italeri helos. Their instructions are vague in many areas and I found myself looking at the Squadron H-34 “Choctaw” In Action book quite a bit.

I painted my UH-34 using my Badger airbrush and Gunze paint properly thinned. For painting and decal placement I followed the pictures in the Squadron book as it has a picture of this aircraft in it. Colors were overall FS 34097 “Field Green”, with yellow rear/upper cowl, and various washes. Decals were fantastic for kit decals. They settled down with ease and I had no problem whatsoever. The markings represent a UH-34D as flown by the U.S. Marines HMM-362 in Vietnam around 1962-63.  I still need to add a red outline around the nose exhaust. But I intend on using a thin, fine-point red paint marker rather then the kit supplied decals. I also need to mount the door M-60 machine gun, although I may just leave it as is as I am not all that romantic about the kit supplied gun mount (and laziness is now inhibiting my desire to scratch build a new one…). 

I really enjoyed building this kit and I am looking forward to attacking the Italeri 1/72 Westland Wessex and CH-53E that I currently have on my bench. Thank you so much for looking and I hope you enjoyed viewing my Sea Horse as much as I have enjoyed sharing it with you. A huge “thank you” must also go out to all those ARC’ers out there who continually answer my seemingly endless bombardments of questions.  

Kind Regards All,

Don

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