Scale: 1/72
Manufacturer: Italeri
No: 065
Item: Sikorsky MH-53E Sea Dragon
 
 

The kit comes in a typical Italeri box with a removeable lid, the box-art consists of two flying Sea dragons over a greyish low detailed landscape with some snow covered mountains at the horizon.

When You open the box You´ll find four sprues.

The first (A), containing main rotor blades,rotor hub, tail rotor, landing-gears, wheels and some small parts.

The second (B), contains mainly the fuselage, engine nacelles, stabilizer and some small parts.

The third (C), are all clear plastic parts.

The fourth (D), are the typical MH-53E parts which is the large sponsons, rearwiev mirrors and some parts for the mine sweeping system.

The overall detail of the kit is very fine, better than their earlier attempts, especially on the small parts. The kit has fine recessed panel lines and rivets - of japanese kit standard. (equivalent with Fujimi's Sea King)

Only on the tail can you see some minor faults, first: the hinges at the fin are very diffuse. ....second: the edge around the ventilation latice´s (is this the right word?) at the fin are looking a little bit on the soft side.
 

If You build the main rotor following the plans You´ll come up with a rotor that has a clockwise rotating direction seen from above.

In all my reference books it shurely shows that it should have a counterclockwise rotation, so if You cut all blades near the rotor hub connection and turn them 180 degrees will the small problem be fixed.

I wonder how Italeri could have done such misstakes.

The decals gives You two possible markings, first a gray U.S. Navy HC-4, No: 41 from the Black Stallions, ..second a white/grey Japanese variant from the Maritime Self Defence Forces 31st Kokutai.

Decals
The quality of the decals seems to be pretty good, they are thin and the print is well centered.

The light grey markings for the Navy machine is a little bit thicker, maybe to prevent the darker grey to "shine" through.

All in all, this is a very fine kit well worth buying. I guess that the CH-53E version also will come because on the inside of the fuselage You can open up holes for location lugs of the both variant´s sponsons.

I hope this little review will give you some new information. It was the best I could come up with on such a short notice, without building the kit.

/Hawk

Scale: 1/72
Manufacturer: Italeri
No: 081
Item: Sikorsky CH-53E Super Stallion
 
 

This is the same kit as above, except from the new smaller sponsons. It's sprue (D) that has all the characteristic parts for the CH-53E version. They are of the same style as with the two engined versions.

The big difference in this kit, compared with the MH- kit is... that they have corrected the main rotor!!!

Rotor blades

They have remoulded all rotor blades to a new refined, and I guess, true replica of the original.

My hope is that they will, from now on also include these parts in the MH-53E kit as well.

The decals gives You two possible markings, first a gray/green/black U.S. Marines HMN 365, No: 22, North Carolina 1990 ...second a gray/green U.S. Marines HMN 464, No: 22, California 1993.

Decals

/Hawk