FFVS J 22
Sweden’s Unknown Fighter

At the beginning of WW 2, Sweden needed a new fighter aircraft. Because of the embargo situation, none of the offered aircraft (from amongst others Mitsubishi) was deemed as suitable, and since SAAB was too occupied with their B 17 bomber aircraft development and couldn’t take on another assignment, a new organization, FFVS (Royal Swedish Aircraft Factory) was tasked with designing a new fighter aircraft from scratch, exclusively for the Swedish Air Force. The work was performed more or less as a one man operation by the chief engineer Bo Lundberg, who designed a small aircraft, which was given the denomination J 22.

Powered by an at that time unlicensed Pratt & Whitney engine, the small and nimble aircraft turned out to be quite a competitive fighter that could even hold its ground in mocked dogfights against much more advanced aircraft, such as the P-51 Mustang - at least on low altitudes. The J 22 was also very easy to maintain and ended up being used all the way to 1952.

The Marivox kit is quite an old kit and is rather simplified. It is however quite cheap and should still build up to a fairly decent scale replica. But the decals look extremely fragile and with a very uneven carrier film, so I might need to replace them with spares and third party decals.