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601 (County of London) Squadron was the renowned "Millionaire's Squadron, membership of which had initially been restricted to members of Whites Club in Mayfair. As the son of a WW1 VC winner, William Henry (Willy) Rhodes-,DSO fitted the profile and was a long-standing member of this auxiliary squadron. He was admired by many and had already demonstrated his flying and combat skills during the time when the unit was first equipped with Blenheims, later replaced by the Hurricane Mk 1. His poignant story is perhaps typical of many pilots who lost their lives during the heaviest part of the BoB in the early part of September 1940, just before the German tactics changed from relentless attacks on RAF airfields in the south to target London, perhaps one of the most important tactical errors the Luftwaffe made. During a heavy series of German raids early on the 6th of September 1940, Tangmere's 601 Squadron was one of many that were vectored against the incoming raids as they crossed Kent en route to cause more mayhem by bombing the principal RAF airfields to the south of London. In combat over the Tunbridge Wells/Mayfield area, the Squadron lost 4 Hurricanes, 2 pilots baling out wounded and 2 killed. Among the losses was Willy Rhodes-Moorhouse whose Hurricane plunged with terrific force into the ground near the High Brooms railway viaduct outside Tunbridge Wells. These losses contributed to the Squadron being withdrawn from the fighting in No 11 Group the next day - too late for Willy. This model is by way of a small tribute to his bravery and that shown by so many who lost their lives at that time. The basis of the model is a relatively-old Revell 1:32 kit which I've tinkered with quite a bit, the results of which are largely quite satisfying although it's always easy to look back on things that could have been done better. Apart from the agonising lack of detail in all sorts of areas that seemed OK perhaps back in the day, the main 2 problems for a kit of this scale was the lack of internal detail depicting the framework around the inside of the cockpit and the fact that the panel lines on all the metal panels were raised, rather than delicately recessed in the way that more modern offerings from Tamiya, Eduard and others manage seemingly effortlessly today. The internal cabin framework was "simply" a matter of finding the drawings and fashioning styrene rod and other bits to fit between the fuselage halves, and some of this can even be seen with the canopy slid open. The panel lines were another matter. I'm not particularly skilled at scribing and this kit nearly caused me to lose the will to live, to the point where the bits were packed away and I did something else for many months. Why doesn't some enterprising kit manufacturer have a 1:32 scale Mark 1 Hurricane in their catalogue - or maybe I'm missing something? Even this kit was really moulded as a Mk IIB, since the wings had the cannon fairings attached, requiring all sorts of handy surgical skills to produce the 8 Browning ports and their underwing ejection chutes. There are good smaller scale kits and even a couple in 1:24 scale, but nothing I've found in 1:32 scale. Shame that the RAF fighter that was numerically more important in 1940 seems to have been overlooked in this scale. Finally I got back to the scribing and managed to finish it to a stage I thought would not look too outrageous, although I suspect some of them are a bit heavy-handed. At this point, I guess I had to decide whether this was going to be an example of any BOB Mk 1 or a specific pilot's a/c. Coincidentally, I had made contact with Johnny Wheeler in the US who's a guiding light in a 601 Squadron Revival unit over there. He'd bought a couple of my BoB books and told me of his interest in 601 Squadron and in particular Willy R-M. So, I thought, here's the natural subject for my Hurricane, possibly one that nobody's done before (?). From various exchanges, I learnt from Johnny that "W" was the a/c id for P8818 in which Willy was killed, a detail that's often difficult to identify from squadron or even pilot logs of this hectic period. I'm not entirely happy with the prop/spinner combination which looks more like the type fitted to Mk II Hurricanes but it was what came with the kit and I couldn't decided whether it would have been a Rotol or a de Havilland type. Hey ho! However, I decided that by early September, 601 Squadron, like the majority in No 11 Group area at the time, would have been called to operate up to 5 sorties each day, with limited time for the ground crews to do much cosmetic maintenance instead of the requirements to re-arm and re-fuel as fast as possible. Hence I allowed my idea of wear and tear to go a bit overboard with plenty of staining and bits of scratched aluminium showing around the cockpit, wing roots and ammo panels. Exhaust staining is also possibly a bit overdone but it's still a bit of a dark art to me. I also decided that in all probability, the undersurfaces of 601 Squadron Hurricanes would not yet have been painted in the Sky colour, since supplies were slow coming to front-line units even if the ground crew had time to change the colour. I opted for a colour that resembles the eau-de-nil tint that was on many such a/c after they'd moved away from the half white/half black scheme of the early war period. Sadly all the kit stencils were for the black/white scheme that re-appeared after the BoB so there's an unlikely mish-mash of white and black stencils all over the underside. I couldn't track down an aftermarket decal sheet in the right scale and my efforts to create my own waterslide decals didn't help. In retrospect, I guess I may have been able to find 1:32 stencils for an early Spitfire which probably would have been reasonably OK but it didn't occur to me. The OOB wheel wells seemed pretty bland with various elements missing that Hasegawa do quite accurately in their 1:48 scale kit. So, using that plus a lot of pics of this area on actual a/c, I set about trying to improve this. I succeeded to some extent, but couldn't quite get the accuracy right on the u/c struts and their realistic location. Maybe this is just me being pedantic since it takes a lot to notice this. The Revell approach to a Barr & Stroud gunsight wasn't impressive, so I put together something that seems to fit but the purists with the skills would find laughably clumsy. Etched Sutton harness, fuse wire grab handles on the sliding cockpit and various other twiddly, and probably invisible bits completed the cockpit. The R/T aerial and insulators came next, followed by the IFF aerials and their mountings on the outer leading edge of the tailplanes. I allso decided that the pilot's mounting stirrup should be in the open position and that caused some fun and games, probably resulting in something that looks OK to some, but is probably a bit off in scale terms. Overall not the most satisfying build, but I'm happy to to have made something that relates to Willy R-M, DSO, who seemed to typify the nonchalant elegance and bravery of his era.