CHRIS CLIFFORD appraises the recent 1/72 Westland Wasp HAS.1 kit from Czech company LF Models.
It’s always been a total mystery to me – and I suspect many other modellers – why the Westland Wasp has been steadfastly ignored by kit manufacturers. Fujimi released a 1/50 example in 1967 (and reissued it on several occasions) but it is poorly detailed and in a non-conforming scale. Oddly, while Airfix issued a 1/72 Westland Scout the previous year, it never took the expected step and produced a Wasp. However, there have been 1/72 conversion sets using Airfix’s Scout as a basis.
Above: Shown here are the main fuselage halves (right), plus the cockpit floor, engine decking and cockpit rear bulkhead.
Westland’s Wasp came as a development of the SARO Skeeter. In actuality it was a navalised version of the then existing Westland Scout operated by the British Army and other air arms around the globe. The Wasp’s tail boom was narrower than that of the Scout and could be folded (along with the main rotors), and the Scout landing skids were usurped by a set of four castoring wheels on strut arrangements. Anti-submarine work was the Wasp’s raison d’être while on the Royal Navy’s small ships, although it was employed occasionally for light …
