Here is my Aurora P-38 Lightning kit with fabulous Jo Kotula box art:
It was the first plane model I built as a kid. My buddy Paul suggested I paint it so I did, entirely in blue with visible brush strokes. An absolutely terrible job to be sure. As a result, I never attempted to paint another model until I assembled a Mummy some four years later.
Here are a couple of pictures of my bigger and more sophisticated Monogram Lightning kit as well:
Here are photos of some of my other warplane model kits:
I was delighted to find the above Revell Dam Buster on Fleabay eleven or so years ago. I believe it was the second model airplane kit I built as a kid. I first saw the Dam Buster kit in late 1963 or early 1964 at McCormick's Hobby Shop clear on the other side of downtown on Oxford Street in London, Ontario. It was run from a small counter at the back of a slightly larger room jam packed with model kits by a pleasant middle aged lady. She ran the shop until sometime in the mid nineties. What I failed to realize all those years though is that she had a treasure trove of unsold back stock in the rear room behind the counter, everything from unsold figure kits to slot car kits! The fellows that bought her out scored big time on the back stock.
The Dam Buster started me on a tear of building warplanes and warships. Included among these were a half dozen Hawk WWII fighters in boxes with the hawk's head logo that my corner store, Les' Variety, stocked on the upper shelf across from the cash register. I recall building Hurricane, Messerschmitt and Focke-Wulf kits for sure, and then maybe Spitfire, Mustang, Thunderbolt, Warhawk, Zero and Fokker Triplane kits. It's possible that some of these may have been Aurora kits but I believe most were Hawk. My military model kit building spree ended when my sister vacuum cleaned my built kits thus sucking up some tiny parts here and there. This of course broke my heart and caused me to lose interest. My father probably pitched them all when I went off to boarding school in Kennebunkport, Maine for grade nine.
Here are the Hawk warplane kits I currently have in my model kit collection:
My focus is on the ones with the hawk's head logo. I don't yet have any of the Hawk planes I built as a kid though. Quite simply, the Hawk kits were never as popular as Aurora or Revell kits and as a result they're much more difficult to find these days.
The two model airplane kits I most clearly remember from my school days are the Aurora MIG-19 and CF-105. They were the two finished models I had suspended from my bedroom ceiling with scotch tape and thread. Once again, I can't remember when they disappeared but I believe it was sometime after my high school years when I moved into the bigger bedroom that my older sister vacated.
Because I so clearly remember the two, I snapped up the CF-105 as soon as I stumbled across one at a toy show here in Toronto some thirty years ago. Because the CF-105 is a Canadian designed fighter, this Aurora kit is particularly popular here in Canada. The MIG-19 I thought was one of those things forever lost in the mists of time until the advent of the internet and Ebay when I realized it was relatively easy to find.
Here are some pictures: