Hello again, fellow modelers and readers!
This article deals with one of the more famous Battle of Britain fighters, the Supermarine Spitfire Mk. I
(although the Hawker Hurricane Mk. I was credited more than half of the German
aircraft kills of that period.) Even though the Spitfire Mk. I wasn’t better
than its German contender, the Messerschmitt Bf-109E, it took advantage of
fighting over its homeland, while the Messerschmitt often fought at the limit of
its fuel capacity. Moreover, by 1940 the United Kingdom
was also protected by perhaps the first radar-operated AEW system of the world,
this fact helped a lot to the success of the British fighters. It was the
Spitfire Mk. V the version that first could fight the Bf-109 on equal terms.
The kit
This Hasegawa Spitfire Mk. I kit from dates from 1987
(according to the box copyright date) but I think the mould is older, therefore
the subject of this article is an old kit. The kit has very finely raised panel
lines, a basic cockpit and a pilot figure. The fit of the wings to the fuselage
at the wing roots is poor, as is the fit between the lower wing and the rear of
the nose. The kit’s exhaust stacks are crude and didn’t fit into their
slots. The characteristic Spitfire’s gull wing is absent in this kit.
The kit included decals for two versions, a pre-war one
with an awfully molded two-blade propeller and the widely known three-blade
propeller version. The decals were slightly out of register, and had a
too-bright red for the insignias and a too-dark grey for the codes and the
background rectangle of the Kiwi from Alan Deere’s aircraft. The decal sheet
also missed all the stencils. By comparing this kit with recent Hasegawa kits,
one can appreciate how big has been the quality improvement of this company’s
kits over the last 20+ years, although the “dirty white” didn’t disappear
from Hasegawa decals until perhaps a couple of years ago.
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images below to see larger images
Building and
painting
I chose to build the familiar three-blade propeller
version from the Battle of Britain, flown by Alan Deere, the top scoring ace
from New Zealand with 22 victories. The build was almost straightforward, although I found the
wing-root fit problems common to Spitfire kits. Another problem was filling the
seams between the lower wing half and the fuselage-moulded section of the flaps,
and the seams next to the wing tips where the lower and the upper wing halves
meet. A better design would have been to mould the complete flaps together with
the upper wing halves, or better yet, separated from the wings, and to extend
the lower wing half up to the wing tips.
The interior was painted Humbrol Hu78 Interior
Grey-green, the pilot was painted following the kit’s instructions, although I
think that the pilot’s colors are wrong. The undersurfaces were painted Hu23
Duck egg blue. The camouflage was painted with Hu30 Dark green and MM RAF Dark
earth (mixed 8:1 with white) using Scotch Magic tape hard masks. The red squares
surrounding the gun ports were also masked and painted.
For painting the undercarriage struts and the wheel
hubs, I found several contradictory recommendations: the kit’s instructions
suggest dark grey, while other sources suggest using the undersurface color and
others suggest aluminum; in the end I used flat aluminum. The undercarriage
parts and the exhaust stacks were painted on the sprues and left aside until the
aircraft was painted, decaled and weathered.
Decaling
After the airframe was painted, I airbrushed two coats
of acrylic gloss clear in preparation for decaling. Hasegawa decals are famous
for their grimy white, and my kit’s decals were a good sample of this feature.
I replaced the fuselage roundels with ones from an Academy Hurricane kit I’m
still building, but the red had a different shade, so I cut the red dots from
the Hasegawa decals and placed them carefully over the Academy decals. In the
case of the fin flashes I had no replacements, so I overpainted the white stripe
later with a brush.
The kit didn’t include the characteristic Spitfire
wingwalks, so I made these from the black frame’s stripes of the decal sheet
from an Airfix kit. I placed the upper-wing roundels over the wingwalks, but the
wingwalk decals were too thick and they show under the roundels if one looks
closely. The upper-wing roundels had another problem: an almost black edge, not
visible until the decals were on the model. I tried to hide those black edges
with dark blue pastel chalks later, in the weathering stage, but these still
show. The kit didn’t include underwing roundels for Deere’s aircraft.
Although I’ve seen at the Internet a model of Deere’s plane finished with
underwing roundels, I left mine without these roundels.
Regarding the code letters, I was tempted to mask and
paint them the correct Medium Sea Grey color, but in the end I used the dark
grey kit’s decals. However, I still don’t like how these code letters look,
at certain angles they almost disappear from view due to the low contrast they
offer with the dark green of the camouflage.
“Low vis” markings were by the way invented some 40 years after the
Battle of Britain!
When decaling was finished, I glued with CA glue
antenna wires made from human hair, inserting the fuselage ones in tiny holes I
had previously drilled. At this point I also glued the exhaust stacks after
shaving their bases to help insertion into their slots on the fuselage sides,
and painted the stacks again.
Weathering and
finishing
I kept weathering to a minimum because many Battle of
Britain’s Spitfires were transferred brand new from the factory right to the
battle field. I just applied a sepia-ink wash to highlight the panel lines of
the control surfaces, and applied some chipping here and there with Hu56 (dull)
matt aluminum, when the model was still gloss-coated. Then I airbrushed a coat
of acrylic flat clear and later I weathered the model with pastels,
concentrating the effect over and behind the exhaust stacks, the gun ports and
the wing undersurfaces, trying to simulate mud. After airbrushing another coat
of flat clear, I painted oil streaks on the front-fuselage undersurface, taking
inspiration from a couple of Spitfire wartime photographs that show a lot of oil
streaks underneath.
To finish the model, I glued the undercarriage
assemblies, painted the guns and the navigation lights, removed the cockpit
masks and polished the cockpit glasses to remove masking tape residues.
Concluding
remarks
The Supermarine Spitfire Mk. I is without question the
more famous British Battle of Britain fighter, and may be the greatest British
aircraft of all times. My Spitfire Mk. I certainly looks nice in my cabinet,
together with my Battle of Britain Bf 109E-4. I’d like to build a better and
more accurate Spitfire I kit in the future. Only time will tell if my wish will
finally come true, as the old Airfix Spitfire I kit, with its raised panel lines
and its basic detail level, is still regarded by many as the more accurate kit
on the subject available in 1/72 scale nowadays. I’d rather wait for the
release of a newly tooled 1/72 scale kit that surpasses the kits from Airfix and
Tamiya.
I dedicate this model to the memory of my father
Orlando, who gave me my first kit 37 years ago and made me an avid reader of
aviation and WWII themes since I was eight years old.
Thanks for watching and reading. Greetings from Caracas,
Venezuela.
Orlando Sucre Rosales
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