There was a time when the RAF's front line gleamed. Through the early 1930s — the era when the service was fondly called "the largest flying club in the world" — the Bristol Bulldog was its silver showpiece: polished cowlings, bold squadron flashes, and massed aerobatic formations thrilling the crowds at the Hendon pageants. Frank Barnwell's compact fighter, from the designer of the Great War's Bristol F.2B, was the most capable interceptor of its day yet never fired its guns in anger across seven years with Fighter Command. Airfix's all-new 1/48 kit captures that gleaming era with a tooling designed from exclusive access to more than a thousand original Bristol drawings.

The Definitive Mk.IIA

This boxing builds the improved Mk.IIA, and carries new parts specific to the mark: the wide-track undercarriage with metal wheels and tailwheel, the later fin and rudder, new cylinder heads representing the Jupiter VIIF engine, an external oil cooler, and optional exhausts with the cabin heater and spent-cartridge collection bins. It's a genuine variant, not a decal swap.

Research You Can See

The multi-part cockpit builds up the internal fuselage framework complete with ammunition bins and machine gun breeches — remarkable depth for an aircraft this small — while the exterior wears a subtly rendered fabric skin effect. Finer details run to the camera gun, wing-mounted generators, bomb rack and landing flare. For a biplane, the engineering is notably modern; for the subject, it's the best it has ever been served in this scale.

Three Faces of the Silver Air Force

The decal sheet offers No.23 Squadron from Kenley in 1931, a 'C' Flight commander's machine of No.3 Squadron during the 1935 Abyssinian Crisis in East Africa, and No.32 Squadron at Kenley in 1935 — two home-defence show birds and one detachment sent somewhere the sun was considerably harsher. All three wear the polished-and-silver schemes that make interwar subjects such striking shelf models.

Mk.II or Mk.IIA?

Airfix's Bulldog comes in two boxings from the same new tooling: the original Mk.II (A05141) and this Mk.IIA with the later-specification parts above. If you want the definitive, most-produced service version — the RAF's standard fighter of the early thirties — the Mk.IIA is the one; the Mk.II suits those modelling the type's earliest squadrons.

What's in the Box

• Plastic components, new-tool 2024/25 design
• Decals for 3 RAF schemes
• Instruction sheet and paint layout sheet

Needed to Complete

• Plastic model cement
• Paints (scheme callouts on the layout sheet)
• Basic modelling tools