¹⁄72

Royal Air Force Rescue Launch

Mike Maynard shares photos of is Royal Air Force Rescue Launch in 1/72 scale.

I purchased this Airfix kit in 1980 but for some reason it wasn’t built until 2010. Over the years I “raided” the kit for parts for my other 1:72 scale boat models. By 2010 all that remained in the box was the hull, deck, and part of the cabin. I almost tossed the remnants but was inspired to build it after viewing a large R/C rescue launch model. It was colorful, well detailed and was very impressive running full throttle on a lake.

I assembled the boat’s hull and made a list of all the items missing which were a lot. Among the more important items that were scratch built were the guns, the cabin interior, sandbags, mast, deck toe rail, and a gantry on the stern (for lifting wounded out of the water). In addition I added a life raft, boat hooks, data buoys, star shell projectors, scramble nets and radio antennas. The one thing that I saved were the 30 year old kit decals and they were applied without any silvering or disintegrating in water.

It was a lot of fun putting together a “bone yard” kit, I’m just thankful it wasn’t an model of the Nimitz that was missing a bunch of parts!

Model Shipwrights would like to thank Mike Maynard for providing photos of his Royal Air Force Rescue Launch