Special Hobby SH32073 IAR-81 BoPi Dive Bomber 1:32

IAR-81 BoPi 1/32

In the late 1930s, the Polish PZL P.11 and P.24 all-metal, high wing fighter planes were produced under licence by I.A.R., Industria Aeronautica Romana. As it was quite clear that such type of design was nearing obsolescence and the future belonged to low wing fighters with retractable undercarriage and enclosed canopy, a design team led by Ion Grosu was formed with the aim to project a modern warplane of such sort. Using the P.24´s fuselage structure, a new fighter plane was created and named the I.A.R.80. The first prototype airframe was fitted with the I.A.R. 14K-IIc32 fourteen­cylinder, double-row radial, delivering 870 hp and was taken aloft for the first time on April 4, 1939. The new fighter had performance approaching that of contemporary foreign designs like the Hurricane, P-36, MS 406 and Bf 109D. Various changes to the plane’s armament led to the I.A.R.80 A, B and C sub-versions being created, and also the I.A.R.81 C which was designed for the fighter-bomber role in the spring of 1941. A specialised dive bomber version, the I.A.R.81 BoPi was also built, fitted with a hinged underbelly bomb rack of design similar to that of the Stuka. When the bomb was released during the dive, the rack swung it outside the propeller arc. Two batches of the BoPi version were built, machines c/n 91-105 and c/n 151-175

In the box adorned with a bomb-laden I.A.R.81 BoPi airplane, the modeller will find in total seven injection moulded sprues made using steel tools, one clear styrene sprue with canopy parts and other smaller clear items, nicely detailed set of resin parts and a fret of photo etches. The model comes complete with the centre-line rack bomb and underwing bombs and their racks. The decals offer four Romanian options, two of them in a three-tone scheme, the other two in two-tone camouflage.