The Sikorsky SH-3 Sea King first came into service with the US Navy in 1961, and was primarily a submarine hunter/killer, although it also performed many other roles such as rescue and transportation. However it was not until they were used in the Apollo programme that Airfix decided to add one to their range, in the late 1960s. The box art shows their role, which was to reach the Apollo command module once it had ditched in the sea, drop rafts and divers, and then winch the astronauts back up and take them to the nearby aircraft carrier. The artwork and decals in the kit illustrate the most famous of these, number 66, which recovered the astronauts from several missions, including the most famous, Apollo 11.
The set includes two identical pilot figures, but they are not why we have included this kit on our site, because it also includes a figure of one of the astronauts as he is being winched up into the helicopter. He correctly wears his suit and face mask (the fear of contamination was very real in those early days of moon exploration), and he sits on the rack-type thing as he is lifted into the helicopter. The figure itself is fine, though as so often it does have an ugly mould mark on the back, but the rack-thing is not. In reality, the Sea King used a Billy Pugh net, which was more of a flexible rope cage with a circular base and netting round the sides, exactly as shown on the box artwork. Clearly this would have been a more complex model to make, so instead Airfix went with an apparently rigid sort of rack, onto which the man sits with considerably less security then the real net would have provided. Airfix suggest attaching the four corners with thread, but this is very much of a compromise.
The recovered astronaut is not an easy figure to use for any other situation, especially with the face mask, but it counts as an extra figure for the kit, so is better than nothing. The kit itself has long been out of production, perhaps because the Apollo programme itself now seems like quite ancient history, although the Sea King remained in service with the US Navy until 2006, and continues to serve elsewhere to this day.
Thre is only one example of an Airfix catalogue image of the model itself, which includes the figure in the 'net'.
