Curtiss SC-1 Seahawk (The Red Sea Sharks)

The Red Sea Sharks (French: Coke en stock) is the nineteenth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. The story was initially serialised weekly in Belgium’s Tintin magazine from October 1956 to January 1958 before being published in a collected volume by Casterman in 1958. The narrative follows the young reporter Tintin, his dog Snowy, and his friend Captain Haddock as they travel to the (fictional) Middle Eastern kingdom of Khemed with the intention of aiding the Emir Ben Kalish Ezab in regaining control after a coup d’état by his enemies, who are financed by slave traders.

– courtesy of Wikipedia

THE FINISHED MODEL:

THE VIDEO:

THE STORY:

As I said before, The Red Sea Sharks is the one Tintin adventure that I never quite seem to remember, mainly because I get it confused with some of the earlier adventures.

Still, of the later albums, it’s probably one of the better ones. Maybe a bit of a dip in quality compared to The Calculus Affair, but still building towards the high-water marks of Tintin in Tibet and the The Castafiore Emerald.

Regardless, it’s got a significant role to play in my Tintin build project. The Khemedi DHC “Mosquito” and the Daimler Armoured Car play relatively prominent roles in the story, and since getting kits for those projects was relatively easy, they certainly make the cut. However, despite the fact that the Curtiss SC-1 “Seahawk” makes only a very small, and insignificant appearance in a single panel near the end of the story, it’s got one thing going for it – it’s a sea plane!

I’ve built the Savoia S.21, Curtiss R3C-0, and the Macchi M.52 from Studio Ghibli animated film, Porco Rosso. I’ve build the yellow Arado AR 196 from the Tintin adventure, The Shooting Star. I’ve even built a “What If” model of the fictional Supermarine S.7! And there’s more to come!

THE BUILD:

The year 2021 has been difficult for all of us. The never-ending COVID pandemic has drained what little energy I had left, and to top if all off I’ve had to shoulder a lot more responsibility at work. That’s left me with precious little free time, and often with a desire to engage in more passive pass times, such as watching movies, sports, or playing video games.

The Curtiss SC-1 Seahawk hunts for the submarine

However, even though I’ve got plenty of projects on the go, sometimes a box will just jump out of my stash and demand some attention. That’s more or less what happened with this little blue box from SMER. Almost by accident, I just dragged it off the shelf, and started getting to work. It seemed like an easy project to get into, and it more or less turned out that way.

The sprues were surprisingly clean for an Eastern European kit of this vintage. One look at the thickness of the canopy though, and I knew that there was no need to spend much time on the cockpit interior. A bit of Tamiya XF-71 Cockpit Green and some XF-19 Sky Grey for the instrument panel, and we were off to the races.

The fit for the fuselage was pretty good. Some flashing did need to be removed, but nothing major. I might’ve spent a bit more time on getting the seams perfect (especially on the main float), but I decided that I didn’t want to lose steam on the project, so I just powered through to a passable result.

The two-tone fuselage was easy enough to accomplish. A coat of XF-19 Sky Grey for the underside, a bit of masking tape, and then a coat of XF-8 Flat Blue for the top and that’s about it. I used the “paint it pink first” tip and covered the ends of the propellor in X-17 Pink before topping them off with another coat of X-6 Lemon Yellow. It really makes the yellow pop – especially when the blades are a simple XF-1 Flat Black.

I had no problem mixing up a bit of “water” for the base, and went for a more pure blue tone than some of the turquoise coloured bases I’ve churned out before. It plays off nicely against the darker XF-8 Flat Blue I think.

I did have a bit of trouble with the SMER decals though. They jumped off the transfer paper and started curling before I got them on the plastic. Luckily US WWII roundels are easy enough to come by in the spares box, so I was able to take a couple of cracks at it. The ones on the side of the fuselage just wouldn’t sit down properly, but after pulling one up in an attempt to move it resulted in some paint peeling underneath, I decided retreat was the better part of valour and left it in place to cover up the crime.

All in all, this was a build to get me back in the game, so mission accomplished on that end. But check it out and leave me a comment to tell me what you think: