March 2023
Sikorsky SH-60B Sea Hawk Sikorsky UH-60A Black Hawk
Link to Website Index: 
Sikorsky S-70 SH-60B Sea Hawk
HSL 141, 1956.
Hasegawa1/72
Link to Website Index:
The Sikorsky SH-60 Sea Hawk is a naval derivative of the S-70 Black Hawk. Fitted
with folding main rotor blades, radar and various anti-submarine systems, it entered
service with the US Navy in 1984. Unlike the Black hawk, it has only one main cabin
door, plus a shorter, but higher deck clearance undercarriage with a twin rear wheel
placed under the mid cabin to simplify deck manoeuvring. The SH-60B variant operated
from smaller ships in the ASW and ASuW roles, replacing the SH-2 Seasprite in the
LAMPS (Light Airborne Multi-Purpose System) role.
SH-60Bs were replaced by the more capable SH-60R from 2006.
The SH-60F was similar but with a dipping sonar and a more limited range of capabilities,
operating from the US Carriers as a replacement for the ASW Sea King.
Building the Hasegawa SH-60B Kit:
Hasegawa's Seahawk kit is surprisingly long in the tooth, having first gone on sale
nearly 35 years ago in 1985. Notwithstanding this age, it is a nice kit, well engineered,
albeit with the simplifications typical of Hasegawa, including a very bare interior.
Scratch building some bits to enable you to leave the cabin door open is not difficult
though, with plenty of pictures on the web. 
Many of the missing bits also remain
available as aftermarket parts. I moved one of the seats to the back starboard bulkhead
and some ex-Fujimi Sea King bits in mine to give a tactical console and the sonobouy
launcher, all trimmed to fit and joined by some sprue and other spare "boxes" where
needed. It's not hugely accurate, but good enough for a peek in the door. The lack
of a cabin roof is a little disappointing. It's not hugely obvious unless you look
inside, but light does show through the gap where the rotor hub attaches! The kit
also provides 3 crew, who can be placed in the pilot and co-pilot seat as well as
the tactical officer's position. These figures are nicely sculpted, and best of all,
all 3 have slightly different poses, but they do sit a little too high in the cockpit,
something that will be very obvious if you choose the option to leave the side door
open.
Assembly is logical and works well. I was a little disappointed by the joint between
the two fuselages, which click together nicely but leave a bit of a lip on the seam,
possibly due to mould wear. This was addressed with some Tippex fluid used as filler/leveller.
Surface detail on the fuselage is very nicely represented by delicately engraved
lines, with crisp detail throughout. The exhaust pipes are also mysteriously missing,
something that definitely needs to be addressed and a strange fault that all of the
Hasegawa S.70 kits share with the Fujimi ones.
Hasegawa have designed the cabin windows to be assembled from the outside of the
model. This has required a rather toy-like tab to be moulded in each window space,
which is a little disappointing, but not a major issue as it should disappear when
the window surrounds are painted. The cockpit windscreen on the other hand is a
pig to fit, for several reasons. Firstly it is very thin, which should be good, but
also makes it very fragile. Mine had some flash and at the leading lower edge, I
couldn't really tell what was moulded detail and what should be removed. The top
centre panel is moulded into the fuselage, but mine was too wide for the windscreen
so needed both parts shaving back. Its leading edge then needs to click over the
windscreen, which is not an easy task, not helped by the aforementioned very high
sitting aircrew figures. At this point in the build I became very frustrated but
eventually it clicked in and was a perfect fit, but this is not Hasegawa's best bit
of buildable engineering and I have heard of many modellers breaking the fragile
transparent part at this stage, which is a major setback. As is my norm, I used magic
marker to tint the roof windows before fitting.
The provided weapons are two torpedoes that look like Mk.46, but are enrtiely passable
for a more modern Mk.54 as well. The frangible nose cones are missing, but in any
event these aren't always carried and can be added from some putty if needed. Check
colours for your specific build as Hasegawa suggest an overall light grey, which
is something that I have never seen. Live torpedoes should be some mixture of overall
green (Mk.46) or an anodised light yellow after body and green main body (Mk.54),
both with a yellow band indicating that they are live munitions or perhaps a reflective
silver and red band with a blue band to indicate that they are drill. Recoverable
droppable exercise variants will differ and range from overall yellow to bright red,
to assist in spotting and recovering them.
The kit provides 2 decal options, on for the brightly marked white and grey original
demonstrator aircraft, plus a toned down set of grey markings for a training aircraft
of HSL-41 in 1984 at about the time of the aircraft's entry into service. Of course,
I couldn't leave well alone and added a few scratch "updates" to my kit. Hasegawa
provide the AN/ALQ-144 "Disco Ball" infrared countermeasures light on the clear sprue
as it is fitted on their UH-60 kit. SH-60Bs wore these at the time of the first
Gulf War, so I added it to my kit. I also added some AN/AAR-47 missile approach sensors
and some of the very prominent hydraulic pipes visible on the rotor head.
This was a very solid and mostly easy to build kit, but it has its shortfalls and
quirks, some of which are the result of it depicting a very early Seahawk. I have
a number of the Hobby Boss kits in the stash ready to build, and they do look to
be a better and more modern option. We shall see!
