Heller 1/72 T33

This is an old kit, and even older airplane...

The T33 was the first Jet trainer that Portuguese Air Force had. It was meant to be the trainer for the P-80, the single pilot version. However, later on, the F84 came instead. At the time this airplane arrived to Portugal, in 1953, it was still a state of the art airplane... During WW2, Portugal managed to be out of the battlefield. Franco in Spain had chosen a different length in the train tracks, which made every train to stop at the border to switch the wheels, and produced a good "last stand" point, which meant that the German Blitzkrieg would not work. As the Iberian penninsule was not considered a big threat, the Germans didn't made a big effort to get in. Moreover, at the time, it was impossible to say what would the outcome be, so, Portugal tried to be "neutral"... Would trade to keep the war out, but would not do any favours to any side... Until American almost "forced us" to accept an agreement for them to use the Lages base in Azores. It was imperative for the bombers, resource transports, everything to supply in there, near the middle of the Atlantic. But, in return to let them use the base, we demanded that they could supply us with the state of the art armement, so that if Germany would try to get back at us for favoring the ally side, we would have resources to defend ourselfs. And the next series of airplanes came because of that deal... The problem is that most of the people saw them still flying nearly 20-30 years after being bought, and forgot their history, and the image that remained was that we only had rusted old airplanes, nothing new...

About this kit, it is old, but nice. It doesn't have that much detail,but it has enough. The clear part is prone to breake... The inside has nice details.

 The landing gear is not badly detailed, it is "afordable", and it has the possibility to have the airbrakes lowered.

You can also do the air recognition version, where the back seat is switched with the equipment to take aerial photographs.

It may be an old kit, but I must admit that int surprised me, as it can become quite good. Not only is an interesting airplane, as it looks nice on any showcase, the very first 2 seats jet trainer.