Azur's 1/72
Hanriot HD.232

By Chris Banyai-Riepl

History

The Hanriot HD.232 was developed as an introductory bomber crew trainer. A twin-engined, twin-tailed design, it first flew in July of 1937 and quickly entered service with the Armée de l'Air. Finland also ordered 22 planes, but this was cancelled at the outbreak of the war. The Hanriot HD.232 was initially used to train Breguet 693 crews, but when Germany overran France they were absorbed into German service, where they were used as generic trainers. After Germany took France, Finland finally got its HD.232s, where they served from 1940 to 1945.

The Kit (click on thumbnails for larger image)

This is an interesting-looking plane, and the Azur kit is a beautiful model of the HD.232. The construction is straightforward, with the majority of the parts being molded in injection plastic. The cockpit interior is mostly plastic, with a couple resin parts, and the detail throughout is pretty good. There's room for improvement, though, such as adding seat belts. The wings are split horizontally and feature some of the best fabric-over-ribs representation that I've seen in a long time. There's no fabric texture, and the troughs between the ribs are just slightly indented. I'll bet that under a coat of paint this will look really good.

The engine nacelles are separate from the wings, and they sandwich the landing gear inside. Some care has been taken to make a fairly strong landing gear joint, so there shouldn’t be any problem there. Gluing the wings to the fuselage might be tricky, as the wing has two angles to it, almost like a gull wing. The wing meets the fuselage at a ninety-degree angle, though, so making a simple jig or even just making a tab arrangement from scrap plastic shouldn't be too hard to do. The tab route would also add strength to the joint, and that is probably the route I'll take when I build this up. Even without doing this, though, there are bracing struts leading from the bottom of the fuselage to the engine nacelles that will also add strength, just like on the real plane.

The stabilizers are molded as one piece, with a portion of the upper rear fuselage. This fits into a cutout in the rear fuselage and doing some quick dry fitting shows that this area will need some cleanup and careful trimming to achieve a perfect fit. The vertical tails are separate, and no locating marks or pegs are provided. It might be easier to assemble these to the stabilizers first, then put the whole arrangement onto the fuselage. Bracing struts are provided in resin for the stabilizers.

The decals are well printed and in perfect register. Three choices are given. The first is a French HD.232, finished in the typical four-color camouflage of dark blue-gray, brown, and green over light blue-gray. The usual roundels and rudder markings are present, as are some large numbers for the undersides of the wing. The second choice is for a Luftwaffe HD.232. This reflects a captured French plane, and is finished in the standard French camouflage outlined above. German crosses are in all the typical places, with swastikas on the tail. The swastikas are provided, but their centers are separate, requiring the model builder to assemble them to make a correct swastika. The final choice offered is a Finnish HD.232. This is finished in the simpler camouflage of green over gray. Yellow wingtips are present on the undersides, as well as a yellow fuselage band. Like the German swastika above, the Finnish roundels have the center section of the cross cut out, leaving it up to you to apply the center and get it aligned.

Conclusion

With so few HD.232s made, it's no wonder that I was scratching my head over this one. But after looking at the kit and the box art, I know that it will be a neat kit to build, and no matter which markings I put it in, it will definitely be different from any other twin on my shelf.