The Lightning was the last supersonic interceptor designed and built wholly in the UK. The increasing cost of weapons systems made it such that it was advantageous to work in concert with non-British aircraft companies when it came to new planes and that is pretty well how things have been since.

What was needed at the time was a plane designed to get into the air as quickly as possible and carry sufficient armament to allow it to shoot down enemy (as in Soviet) bombers and their escorting fighters. To that means, the aircraft was armed with both cannon and missiles. Two of the most powerful turbojets then available were mounted one above the other to reduce cross section and the Lightning was born.

The aircraft are a nightmare for maintainers due to the engine layout and the lack of safeguards. For instance, the hydraulic control lines can easily be switched by an inattentive fitter and engine changes are anything but quick. Still, it was an impressive aircraft and pilots loved to fly it. Even today, there are some that are air capable, but limited to ground operation because of the issue with the crossed hydraulic controls.

The Platz/F-toys kit is the last variant made, the Lightning F.6. Many of these aircraft were simply rebuilds of earlier airframes, a cost effective way of getting more updated aircraft. This is not the only Lightning F.6 to be done in this scale, with Revell making a very nice one. However, Platz/F-toys do kits for the home market and the Revell kit, when available, is pricey in Japan.

In line with other kits in this series, you get two of them in the box. These are considerably simpler than the Revell kit and have a basic cockpit, main and nose landing gear where the gear, wheels and doors are molded as one as well as single piece wings and missiles (Firestreaks) have the pylons molded in place. It does include the upper wing fuel tanks and you can build the kits gear up, though there isn't a stand included.

Instructions are quite basic with the build steps on one side of a folded sheet and full color painting and decal placement instructions on the other. Gunze and Model Master paint references are provided. A nice touch is that the three markings options are in three different color schemes. The 74 Squadron plane in unpainted metal with a black tail, The 11 Squadron offering in green/grey uppers and unpainted underside with the final being a 92 Squadron plane in dark green uppers and unpainted lower surface. Decals are nicely printed and offer the black nose anti-glare panel. Note that the 92 Squadron roundel and flash are not shown but included as an addendum.

Like other kits in this series, the mounting pins/tabs and receptacles are very large. If you don't want to use the upper wing tanks, you'll have to fill the holes. I found when building the F-4E that I had to use filler on pretty much every join. I also found the canopy framing to be indistinct, though it looks fine on this kit. There is no indication of nose weight needed, but you probably will so I suggest adding weight if you are going to model this gear down. In general, this can be made into a nice model, though based on past experience, you'll need to put a bit of effort into it.

September 2017

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Thanks to Platz Hobby  for the review kit. You can find this kit at this link.

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