Unicraft 1/72 G-38 Light Cruiser

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Unicraft 1/72 G-38 Light Cruiser plastic model kit

1/72 Unicraft G-38 Light Cruiser

Resin Model Kit,   Box Condition: Sealed NM

Still factory tape sealed. Very rare model of this advanced Soviet design. Nicely detailed, limited-run resin kit. This aircraft history is from the website Hanger 47.com - The G-38 Light Cruiser was an experimental fighter designed and built by the P.I. Grokhovsky Design Bureau from 1934-1936. Conceived as a two-seat fighter-bomber, and powered by a pair of 900 hp Gnome-Rhone radial engines, it was to be armed with two ShVAK 20mm cannon and four ShKAS 7.62 mm machine guns, all installed at the wing roots or in the small fuselage pod that was faired into the leading edge of the wing. At least some of these forward firing weapons were employed in the narrow gap between the two propeller arcs, and did not have to be burdened with synchronization gear. On the three-seat version there were reportedly an additional two SHKAS guns firing to the rear and controlled by an aft gunner.In the mid-1930s, the concept of the “fighter-destroyer” was very popular in design and planning circles. The Grokhovsky G-38 was one of many examples of this class of fighter that were designed but never flown. It was a twin-boom, multi-seat heavy fighter comparable in concept to the Dutch Fokker G.1 or the Lockheed P-58 ‘Chain Lightning’ — although the American aircraft it is most often compared to is Lockheed’s P-38 Lightning of WWII. The G-38, however, was remarkable in a number of respects, most significant of which was the execution of the twin-boom concept. The Fokker and the Lockheed designs were large, bulky aircraft, as was the original take on the G-38. When Grokhovsky hired the young Pavel Ivensen to work on the project, however, the aircraft was transformed into something rather exciting. Ivensen completely redesigned the aircraft and what emerged, was a relatively small plane, with a wingspan of 13.4 meters (compared with 16 meters for the P-38 and 17 meters for the Fokker G.1) in a compact, aerodynamic twin-boom airframe.It was constructed almost entirely of wood, with metal parts restricted to the cockpit, engines, weapons and landing gear. The crew (reported alternately as either two or three men) were contained in a tapered teardrop-shaped pod faired into the broad wing center section, and the two Gnome-Rhone radial engines tapered to extremely slender booms. The G-38 had an incredibly low frontal area for an aircraft of its class, and a high wing loading for the time. Its maximum speed was estimated at 340 mph, quite fast for its time (1936). Most remarkable of all was the fact that the preliminary designs were approved in 1934, making the highly modern looking G-38 a contemporary of the Hawker Hurricane and Curtiss P-36. After two years’ work, it was canceled in 1936 on the eve of completion of the prototype. Josef Stalin had an abiding distrust in virtually everyone, and the leading lights among his aircraft designers were anything but exempt; in 1937, Grokhovsky was swept up in the purge which decimated the Soviet armed forces that year, and arrested on false charges. He would ultimately die in prison in 1946. Had it not been canceled in the months prior to the 1937 Purge, Grokhosky’s cutting edge G-38 might have equipped the Soviet Air Force with a revolutionary fighter on the eve of World War II.

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