History

The Sea Fury's development was formally initiated in 1943 in response to a wartime requirement of the RAF, thus the aircraft was initially named Fury. As the Second World War drew to a close, the RAF cancelled their order for the aircraft; however, the Royal Navy saw the type as a suitable carrier aircraft to replace a range of increasingly obsolete or poorly suited aircraft being operated by the Fleet Air Arm. Development of the Sea Fury proceeded, and the type began entering operational service in 1947.
The Hawker Sea Fury was a British fighter aircraft designed and manufactured by Hawker. It was the last propeller-driven fighter to serve with the Royal Navy, and also one of the fastest production single piston-engine aircraft ever built. Developed during the Second World War, the Sea Fury entered service two years after the war ended. The Sea Fury proved to be a popular aircraft with a number of overseas militaries, and was used during the Korean War in the early 1950s, as well as against the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba.

Contents

Introduction to the Sea Fury.
Chapter 1. Sea Fury, Development.
Chapter 2. Sea Fury, Fleet Air Arm.
Chapter 3. Sea Furies, Export.
Chapter 4. Sea Fury, At War.
Sea Fury Colour Side Profiles.
Sea Fury, Modelling the Sea Fury.
Appendix 1. Walkarounds Sea Fury in Detail.
Appendix 2. Kitography.
Appendix 3. Production.
Appendix 4. Units.

Review

Laid out in typical Sam Publications modellers data files soft back book albeit the scaled down version it is still 96 pages of fascinating information. The Introduction starts you off with a brief history and details about the plane and an acknowledgements of help from various contributors.

Chapter 1. Sixteen pages of information in chapter 1, with plenty of photos following the informative nature that the chapter is written in certainly works well together. It starts with the Sea Fury's development as the ultimate piston-engine fighter supremely fast very powerful and yet lightweight. This whole chapter is very fascinating in the way that it explains about the development of a lighter weight fighter of the Tempest intended for the RAF and FAA. To go with this information some great pictures including the second prototype Sea Fury and first to full naval standard SR 666.
This chapter is literally full of information that is one of those once you start reading you just find it hard to put down, I know I certainly did. I had no idea just how many trials these planes went through and the different locations that these took place at like Boscombe Down and Farnborough.


Chapter 2. Starts with the Sea Furies that were used by the Fleet Air Arm Service , The first fury of the second production batch was TF956. Twice damaged in Korea '956 was sold back to Hawker in1962 and restored by them in 1972. Gifted to the Royal Navy Historical Flight she served at air shows across Europe until crashing in June into the Firth of Clyde off Turnberry Point, Ayrshire after the starboard undercarriage leg failed to lower following a display at Prestwick Air Show. The pilot baled out safely at 6,000ft and was rescued by a Sea King from Prestwick.
This aircraft appears in a great picture on the apron at North Weald in 1988.
VR 927 105/Q of 802 Squadron hit the barrier after missing the wires on HMS Theseus in 1949. This is just two of the pictures on the first two pages of Chapter 2. This chapter is all about the first of the Sea Fury history with the Fleet Air Arm from the trials through to the to the commencement of their service life. Another very informative piece of work charts the Sea Fury right the way through to combat, through to equipping the RNVR units (Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve). It then heads to the training squadrons and lastly to the Royal Navy Historic Flight. This charts the success of the Sea Furies during air shows and also some of the accidents.

Chapter 4. Sea Furies for Export. The Sea fury was widely exported not only to traditional naval air arms but to other countries that did not want jet fighters but did want to have very as near to a jet as the piston engine could be.
It goes on to say in some detail about the countries that took on the Sea fury and very much an historical background of how and when these countries took charge of there planes. Like the two previous chapters their is a large amount of pictures to support the information some of which would serve as rich diorama source for those amongst us into diorama builds. Countries that took on the Sea fury included Australia, Burma, Canada, Cuba, Egypt, Germany, Iraq, and Morocco to name but a few. Each page is full of history and information on the country and of the Sea Furies themselves it is a very interesting read.

Sea Fury Colour Side Profiles is a five page article with twenty different Sea Furies in different variants and colour schemes depicting Fleet Air Arm planes in different colours to natural aluminium finished aircraft this also has the different countries colour schemes proving such a useful tool for the modeller.

Sea Fury Modelling the Sea Fury shows a Hobbycraft 1/48th scale FB.11 being built as prototype SR661, showing the use of a resin cockpit, the build process and painting.
Then there is a Aki 1/72nd scale FB.11 Resin kit going through the process of being built and just some of the very high detailed parts that resin can provide. Everything is covered here on how to build and paint your kit.

The last part of this article is the Special Hobby 1/72nd scale T.20 training version of the Sea Fury finished in natural aluminium finish which really looks incredible the finish of it.

Appendix 1 Walkarounds The Sea fury in detail. is a set of 90 close up photos showing various parts of the Sea fury in high detail gloss colour pictures. These are of such value to any modeller that wants to build any of the Sea Furies showing of such intricate details and colourations of parts you might not normally see.

Appendix 2. Kitography. is a list of Sea Fury models in the various scales that are listed by scale, manufacturer, Description, Stock, Notes.
They also do the same for decals for the Sea Fury and accessories for the Sea Fury which is listed in the same manner. This is an incredible list for the modeller which gives details on all the various products available for the Sea Fury modeller.

Appendix 3. Production a listing of all production Sea Furies by Contract, A/C, mark, Serials, Remarks. interesting information

Appendix 4. Units starts with the Sea Fury units laid out as Squadron, Main Shore Base, Dates, Marks, Examples
The same format is done for the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.
Sea Fury second line Squadrons.
Miscellaneous Sea Fury units.

Conclusion

For someone whose family have flown in the Fleet Air Arm, the Hawker Sea Fury Modellers Data file is not just essential but extremely well written and excellent factually a I cannot put this book down. But for the purpose that these data files are created they are an amazing asset to the modeller.


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