19squadron

With regard to the, "unattached wire" in your pics above ;- They are venting pressure lines that are attached to a valve at the top of the oleo alongside the large charging valve for the oleo. They are used to relieve and drain the oleo of the hydraulic charge. The relief valve line can either run straight down to oleo, or depending on the length of the line wind around the oleo before being held in a bracket at the bottom of the oleo.

Aircraft when built had wheel wells and oleos, oleo door insides painted aluminium silver, Aircraft however were often repainted at MU's or at their squadrons, and that was very often the cause for wing underside colour to be used instead of masking it up. I have never seen any evidence for undercarriage or wheel wells being painted interior green, and I believe that is an error. The line running down the oleo is the brake air line, which would have been painted silver in wartime service unless repainted by a MU or squadron. see below a pic, actually of a MkVII, built alongside MkIX's.

If Kotare did do a DH.4, one could only hope it would be better done than their Spitfire..... Maybe CSM would do one, their Bristol Scout is very welcome.

This is perfect, very very beautiful, and perfectly judged!

I absolutely agree, the DH.4 is a very important aircraft, and it always surprised me that WNW chose to kit the DH.9 in preference to the DH.4! A release of a DH.4 would be absolutely brill in my opinion.

Also of particular note on K5054, is just how narrow the 6-piece engine top cowl was on the prototype, this is because K5054 first ran a Merlin C and then a Merlin F both of which sported like the Merlin I fitted to Fairy Battles ramp head cylinder heads which with their canted valves made the engine narrower at the top across the rocker covers, so you see here how the top cowl which has straight edges is appreciably narrower than the side cowls below. On production engines, Merlin II and Merlin III which had conventional parallel valves above the cylinders, the rocker covers are wider and require a broader top cowl which has an undercut to the lower panels, There is also the advent of two blisters at the rear of the top cowl to clear the chain drive on Merlin II and Merlin III engines on production aircraft. The top cowl part on the Kotare kit has really the wrong shape which is a major failure in that kit. The top cowl on a Spitfire is as iconic as the wing form in my opinion.

Hi Paul Take a look at this photo, shot on the same day as the pic above. I'd say the surface looked pretty polished, as noted in Supermarine's pretty thorough notes on K5054 from this day. Note also that the panel lines running along the same axis as the wing spar, run right up to the wing fillet, and there is absolutely no broad panel running across the wing root as drawn on the Jon Freeman drawing seen above - so many mistakes in so many publications! !

Hi Paul yes I read that in some modellers books but I do not think it is correct, - had K5054 been Zinc Chromate treated behind the fuel tank the colour would be even [like the chromate-treated wing I posted], and clearly, individual panels look different, so I think K5054 was natural aluminium in different shades with panels that had oxidised to vary in their appearance. More importantly the Supermarine records state K5054 was in natural aluminium, and highly polished, so that pretty clearly rules out Zinc Chromate.

They were linen patches, applied with red dope - simply because those materials were commonly in store at airfields to repair fabric surfaces. Easy cheap and to hand. Clear dope may have been used, but the evidence is that red dope was common, and that makes sense from the photos and because it was held in stores.

And here is a pic showing red dope residue on the wing from patches of the type commonly seen during the BoB, a practice adopted from Hurricane squadrons in May 1940.

With reference to Edgar's last line in the attachment above. Here is a pic of a Spitfire in 1941 with proprietary Supermarine made sticky back elasticated square gun port patches.

I never met Edgar Brookes, but we discussed Spitfires online many a time, and crossed swords a couple of times too, particularly over the MkIII oil cooler. Attached is his take on Gun port patches, recorded in Edgar Brookes's " Spitfire Notes" The last line in Edgar's notes from above is incorrect. The date for the Vickers [Supermarine] Issue of "gun port patches" of 24th september 1940 refers to the issuing of factory-made, bright red, sticky-backed, tailored and slightly elastic proprietary cloth gun covers, that took their queue from the elasticated sticky-backed medical bandage used from May 1940 during the Dunkirk emergency. The Supermarine patches were neat, and instantly applied and their equivalent is readily seen today on flying aircraft, but quite different from the improvised red doped linen patches usually seen in BoB photos and common together with stuffed rag not to mention medical bandage used from May 1940.

Yes absolutely, the point I was trying to make - in reference to your comment about books and gun covers was just how much flawed research there is in the books - sadly! As you know that was an issue I was determined to try to do something about, and got as far as a commission and the first three chapters before it was hijacked. Hey Ho!

I am just contemplating doing the same, but from a Tamiya MkXIII in 1/32 which is a much easier start point from the point of view of the basic forms.

Here is a pic of a Spitfire wing having undergone Zinc Chromate coating as an assembly, note the even colour.

Ally panels on K5054 after her first flight. It is not normal to chromate ally sheet before it is cut and formed, because the coating gets damaged. Normal practice is to coat assemblies once they are completed but before assembly.

Most publications are very inadequate on the subject, by far the best way to understand what went on is to speak with RAF fitters who served in Fighter Command squadrons during 1940. Of all the books on the Spitfire, I cannot think of one that has not printed a misrepresentation, with the sole exceptions of Alfred Price's books which are excellent and also Cyril Russell's book, Spitfire Odessy which is again excellent. Just take K5054 as an example - In the On Target profile no 4 K5054 is drawn with production Spitfire panel lines - totally wrong, but does present K5054 in it's second paint scheme [sky blue] with roundels with white borders, which is correct. Contrast that to the scheme below, with some of the correct panel lines [but not all] but showing highly unlikely coloured Zinc chromate surfaces.

Doped gun cover patches first appeared on Hawker Hurricanes in 1937, and were painted to match the camouflage of the aircraft. Spitfires encountered guns freezing at altitude at 19 squadron and 66 squadron tasked with shaking down the new aircraft, with the first guns fitted with MkI flash eliminators. All manner of remedies were tried starting with removing the eliminators that protruded into the airstream, to the design and issuing of metal clipped gun covers which popped off with the first round, to eventually gun heating piped to each Browning from ducts behind the radiator. In may 1940 during the Dunkirk operation, aircraft flew with all manner of gun cover provision from metal caps, to rags stuffed into the gun ports. The doping of patches over gun ports was adopted from Hurricane squadrons and initially could be clear dope or the more common red dope, and began to appear during the Dunkirk operation. Elasticated cream coloured sticky backed Medical bandage was also used in may/june 1940, and became the prototype for the bright red sticky slightly elastic gun port cover made for Supermarine and issued from september 1940. It was routine to also dope newspaper over the cartridge ejector ports during the wet months to stop mud clogging them, there are several fitters accounts of that being routine from pre war.

They were issued to aircraft that had the Martin Baker hood release fitted, or were rero fitted, and were intended to release a hood when that system failed, they were not fitted to break the hood - .

For some, yes, others will enjoy the challenge - many people just enjoy building OOB without, making corrections, others take the greatest pleasure in doing the research to make a model accurate and detailed. I have not seen one build on LSP or FB where any of the legion of errors - even in the cockpit which are relatively easily corrected with some scratch building - have been incorporated into the build. Which is really surprising since some of the errors are huge! But there you go! Each to his own!

unpainted steel.

Cool The biggest problem with that kit is it is 2mm too long between the spinner and cockpit, and too wide through the fuselage between engine and cockpit, both issues can be remedied. Have you a particular airframe? time period in mind?

The reality is, crowbars actually appeared in aircraft long after the clips to carry them, by which time most MkII's were either converted to MkV's or were on charge at OTU's.

Why are you asking? Building a Revell kit? or the Hasegawa? or converting a Tamiya MkIXc?

Here is a colour photo from 1942, when crowbars tend to appear in aircraft.