1/48 Tamiya Spitfire Mk.Vb

Gallery Article by David Mielke - "VMFA314Knights" on Aug 26 2016

 

      

This is the 1/48th scale Tamiya Spitfire Mk.Vb Tropical Version, (released in 1994) built up as part of my WWII "Canadian Aces" collection. The kit has a number of non-fatal flaws (or fatal if you are a real Spitfire buff) however, it is simple to build, well molded with good detail and includes clipped and standard wingtips, alternate wheel hubs, Vokes and Aboukir air filters, ferry fuel tank, alternate canopies / windscreen and round or square rear vision mirror. (Which came in handy as I ended up needing some of these spare parts.) These days we have the 1/48th Airfix kit as an option to build, depending on your preferences.

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Not having the decals for a few of the Canadian Spitfires I wanted to build, I had shelved this project for a time. By chance I ran into Tony Bell at the annual model show at the CWHM in Hamilton, who had a couple of his beautiful Spitfires on display that he had finished in custom markings. Tony had used the Silhouette Portrait plotter cutter to produce the paint masks for his aircraft and after talking to him I decided to give this method a try as well. After a little experimenting I had the masks to produce the markings I wanted for this aircraft... good to go.

After a straight-forward build, I painted the kit RAF tropical Middle Stone / Dk. Earth scheme over Sky Blue which I then over-sprayed the upper surface with a thinned coat of US Navy blue-grey as my research indicated that this was the probable camouflage. Subtle paint weathering was applied during painting. The ID lettering and serial number etc were then sprayed using the masks with good results. I had a minor issue when I failed to seal the canopy interior and ended up over-spraying it a bit... no problem I'll just use a bit of mineral spirits to clean that up... seems mineral spirits make the canopy very brittle and I snapped a chunk out of it - Crap! Oh wait, lucky another canopy came with this kit (which I have a couple of these kits so I can borrow one) - all is not lost. The kit was further weathered with panel washes for a "used" look. 

EN976 was one of the first Spitfire Vbs sent to Malta and was assigned to 249 Squadron in July 1942 based at Takali airbase.  The aircraft was flown by RCAF "Ace" Plt Officer John McElroy as well as RCAF Plt Officer John Williams who claimed 2 Bf 109s in it on 27JL42. The aircraft was lost on operations 25AU42.

(P.S. for a good read on the Malta operations I highly recommend McCaffery's "Hell Island").

Keep building what you want,

David Mielke

Photos and text © by David Mielke