Grumman's E-2 Hawkeye is the U.S. Navy's longest-serving carrier-borne aircraft. Deployed on carriers in 1964, the Hawkeye and its airborne radar still help protect U.S. Navy carrier strike forces 44 years later.
Of course, the E-2A has evolved through B and C models to the latest mutation, the E-2C Hawkeye 2000, with upgraded electronics, uprated engines, and bizarre, eight-blade propellers.
Nearly as old, Fujimi's 1/72 scale injection-molded kit also has morphed through the years. First issued around 1970 as the E-2A, the kit was updated to the E-2C, then later given more-detailed undercarriage and propellers. Now, a new sprue has been added to provide eight-blade props and spinners.
But underneath the upgrades, the basic moldings are much as they were four decades ago: lightly raised panel lines, fine rivets, typical fit, but with the flash, thick small parts, and sink marks you'd expect to see from aging molds. There's no detail in the wheel wells, and very little in the cockpit. The two-part canopy is split down the centerline and includes some of the nose area forward of the windscreen. This is the trickiest part of assembling the kit - making a clean assembly without marring the windows.
The wing fits the fuselage well, but the six struts holding the radar-dish mount to the fuselage need filler and sandpaper to smooth the joints. All the gear doors and antenna masts are terribly thick for the scale. On the other hand, the upgraded landing-gear struts are well detailed and fit without trouble. There's no mention of nose weight, but it's needed with that heavy radar dish and multiple stabilizers on the tail. I attached a thin plastic rod to the bottom of the fuselage to keep the model sitting on its nose gear.
The new prop blades look really wicked, but the spinners are too large and blunt compared with photos. The decal sheet provides prop-tip markings - thank you, Fujimi! Otherwise, I would have been faced with masking 64 times (16 blades, two sides, two colors).
I painted the airframe in the simple scheme of gloss light gull gray. The outer vertical stabilizers' surfaces are gloss black, and the leading-edge deicer boots are flat black.
Only the "Commander, Air Group" bird of VAW-115 "Liberty Bells" is featured on the decal sheet. Strangely, the photo of a real Hawkeye on the boxtop is not this airframe, and I haven't uncovered a photo of the VAW-115 CAG bird with the new propellers. The large decal for the torch and lightning bolts on the radar dish makes no provision for the small dome in the center. I had to cut an X in the decal to let it drape over the dome, then retouched it with paint.
I spent 27 hours on the Hawkeye, but the old Fujimi kit still falls short of today's state of the art. There are a lot of missing external antennas and sensors, and the nose still looks bulbous. Detail fanatics have no aftermarket sets to add; any major improvements will have to be handmade.
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