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Hope's Sword (4 x Eduard 1/72 Spitfires)


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"And we go on fighting despite the assurance that we have lost the war. Why, then, do we go on dying? Out of despair? But there is no despair. You know nothing about defeat if you think there is room in it for despair."

 

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras

 

 

Hope is the only good god present among men
The rest abandoned us and went to Olympus.

 

-- Theognis, Fr. 1135-6

 

 

They came in the night.
They killed everyone.
I hid in the shadows.

And then it came to me:
The magic sword.

 

-- "Kill Them All", The Magic Sword

 

 

You're gonna have to do better than fear
You're gonna have to step out of the shadows and fight.

 

-- The Protomen, "Keep Quiet"

 

 

"This then, my lords and gentlemen, is the message which we send forth today to all states and nations, bound or free, to all the men in all the lands who care for freedom's cause. To our Allies and well-wishers in Europe, to our American friends and helpers drawing ever closer in their might across the ocean, this is the message-lift up your hearts, all will come right. Out of depths of sorrow and sacrifice will be born again the glory of mankind."

 

-- Winston Churchill, "Speech to the Allied Delegates", 12 June 1941

 

I've just finished up three Eduard Spitfire IXs, and I was wondering to myself what would make a good follow-up to building three of a pretty great (but not perfect) kit of my favourite airplane of all time. Easy. Build four more. Since I have four of the quad-kit Royal boxings of Eduard Spitfires, I have plenty to spare.

 

Poland's been much on my mind recently, as I'm currently reading Richard Lukas's The forgotten Holocaust: the Poles under German occupation, 1939–1944, and recently finished his shorter work Did the Children Cry?,  about the brutality inflicted upon Polish children by the Nazis, so one of the four Spitfires I'm building will be EN526/SZ-G, Polish ace Aleksander "Gabby" Gabszewicz's first Mark IX, with the wide cannon blisters and short carb intake. I can't seem to find a photo of this aircraft, so if anyone knows of one, I'd be most grateful. In the event EN526 can't be represented by the model, I have a backup plan in the form of another Polish Spitfire.

 

I'll also be building WZ-GJ/"Eleanor", a reverse lend-lease Spitfire LF.IXc flown by Major Garth Jared (3 + 1 probable + 1 damaged) of the 309th FS, 32nd FG in 1943. Tony recently built this aircraft, and I agree with his conclusion that it was painted in the standard Day Fighter Scheme rather than desert colours. Major Jared was a graduate of the University of California, where he met his wife Eleanor; he would later name his Spitfire after her. He served as a test pilot in the P-47 program before heading out to the front, where he was killed in action on 18 April 1944, when his P-51 was hit by flak. In addition to his wife, he left behind a year-old son, Stephen. I was able to locate Stephen on LinkedIn, but figured he would be unlikely to respond well to some weirdo contacting him with questions about his late father and so have not bothered him.

 

My third Spitfire will be LF.IXe NH432/OU-D/"Waipawa Special", flown by Flying Officer Max Collett of 485 Squadron RNZAF. In 1993, Max Collett took the time to write a letter to a small boy in America after seeing his letter to the editor in D.C.O., the official magazine of the Spitfire Society. I've kept it ever since. It would be impossible for me to not build this aircraft.

 

Lastly, I'll be building TB752/KH-Z/"Val", flown by Squadron Leader Henry Zary, an American of Polish descent (his birth name was Zartykiewicz) from New York City, enlisted in the RCAF in February of 1941 and remained with it throughout the war, though as an American he could have joined the USAAF and received much higher pay after his own country entered the war in December of 1941. He scored five victories, three of them in a single sortie on 25 July 1944, when he shot down two Bf109s and then, having expended all of his ammunition, caused the third to crash by skillful flying. He contracted pleurisy after the war and died in Quebec on 11 February 1946, aged 27. 

 

32755426656_5caf072435_k.jpg20170208_223137 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

32795761925_c676100c36_k.jpg20170208_223141 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

So far I've begun the seats. I'm doing one with the styrene seat armour for scientific reasons.

 

32795761845_9da3dadaf3_k.jpg20170208_223125 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

 

 

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Do you ever try and do something just to see if you can even do it?

 

32771845086_e965d09362_k.jpg20170209_204242 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

Me too.

 

32771844266_023dcb5576_k.jpg20170209_212255 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

Anyway, only a little work done so far:

 

32771844296_388d460eab_k.jpg20170209_212108 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

I'll still need to paint the seats that curious reddish-brown colour they were, as well as the black of the seat backrest -- that will come once the enamels dry. 

 

I may rethink which Spitfires exactly I'm building -- I had originally wanted to do more aircraft from the occupied countries, but last night I was kind of exhausted when it was time to pick out paint schemes. So that might be a little up in the air, we'll see.

 

 

19 hours ago, Crossofiron1971 said:

Quite the project...

 

We'll see! It took almost a month exactly (granted, January is interminably long) to build the last three, so hopefully I can get these done within six weeks. 

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12 minutes ago, Squibby said:

Wow you must have a lot of spitfire kits sitting around, What's the tally up to now? 7?

 

 

These'll make seven built this year (hopefully). I have four Royal boxings, including this one, two of the XVI combos, and three VIII combos, plus a lone F.IX. So, not counting these four, twenty-three unbuilt. You could say I'm somewhat fond of them.

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9 minutes ago, Procopius said:

 

These'll make seven built this year (hopefully). I have four Royal boxings, including this one, two of the XVI combos, and three VIII combos, plus a lone F.IX. So, not counting these four, twenty-three unbuilt. You could say I'm somewhat fond of  completely obsessed by them.

 

Fixed that for you mate. Glad to see you are working on reducing the stash. :D

 

Superb opening as usual, I'll come along if you don't mind?

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

 

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PC, you may be single handedly preserving Western Civilization. Keep up the good work.

 

Also, you managed to get those multi-part seats together very nicely, mine ended up a little wonky - I must try harder next time (I don't have as many Eduard kits as you [I also noticed you didn't count any overtrees]: twelve, minus the one LF.16 on the go). 

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1 hour ago, Cookenbacher said:

Also, you managed to get those multi-part seats together very nicely, mine ended up a little wonky - I must try harder next time

 

They took a few tries for me -- not really sure why they needed to be three parts. I've had a fair amount of practice by this point, though.

 

2 hours ago, Cookenbacher said:

(I don't have as many Eduard kits as you [I also noticed you didn't count any overtrees]: twelve, minus the one LF.16 on the go). 

 

I did omit my two overtrees, you're quite right! 

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Nice work on the compass!   :)

 

When you get a chance, stop by Rottenchester and build some of my pile of AZ Spitfire kits...I think there's one of every mark. Well, maybe not, but darn close. 

 

Cheers,

Bill

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6 hours ago, Navy Bird said:

When you get a chance, stop by Rottenchester and build some of my pile of AZ Spitfire kits...I think there's one of every mark. Well, maybe not, but darn close. 

 

I have a four-day weekend. See you soon!

 

Anyhow, slow going right now. Just worked on making sure I got a cockpit right before doing the other three, and repainted the chairs.

 

32832183645_b3d79a2cdc_k.jpg20170211_000544 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

I also got one wing together. Even with extensive modification of the wingtip locating pins, it proved beyond my abilities to get the panel line to form a continuous line.

 

32708601341_6c6e9c1534_k.jpg2017-02-11_12-22-43 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

 

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Just now, Stew Dapple said:

Kudos, you managed to fit the belts without cracking the paint off :coolio:

 

These ones are pretty good -- normally I just skip the belts, but they behaved so nicely when I used them on one of the last three Spitfires I built, I felt they deserved a chance.

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Joining in a few days in and already over 400 posts. There goes a few hours. You can never have enough Spitfires. All the best with one man Group Build.

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Greetings from the assembly line.

 

32459389880_de4ec4b3e9_k.jpg20170211_103900 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

32459387780_402218a576_k.jpg20170211_103905 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

32025699323_39bc4f39cd_k.jpg20170211_103841 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

32840369145_a12c6fc8af_k.jpg20170211_103851 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

32459391870_71b8af680d_k.jpg20170211_092648 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

I applied one a them thar filter things to the cockpit sides, but then I thought better of the colour I was using after the first side panel was done and switched; pro tip: this will wrinkle enamel paint. It looks okay now. 

 

 

I dropped Mrs P and Winston and my mother in law off at the airport -- they're off to sunny Arizona and I'm back here alone for a week on kind of a tight budget thanks to the need to pay for a week's worth of daycare for Win while my mom (who watches him during the day) goes to Florida to visit her friend (the daughter of the Waffen-SS officer I mentioned in a prior thread, in fact -- she's in a bad way, with Alzheimer's and breast cancer, and this will likely be the last time my mom sees her), and also for the ultrasound we had a little while back, which my (pretty good) insurance through work only covered two-thirds of. So that's fun, and slightly derails some decal acquisition plans for the immediate future. We're doing better surely than we deserve, ahead of both the mean and median household incomes for American families, but for some reason, every January and February, we find ourselves pretty tight on cash. Since these are already the most depressing and cold months of the year, it's pretty frustrating. At least I have my Spitfires.

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1 hour ago, Procopius said:

 my (pretty good) insurance through work only covered two-thirds of. So that's fun, and slightly derails some decal acquisition plans for the immediate future. We're doing better surely than we deserve, ahead of both the mean and median household incomes for American families, but for some reason, every January and February, we find ourselves pretty tight on cash. Since these are already the most depressing and cold months of the year, it's pretty frustrating. At least I have my Spitfires.

Law 5 of cosmic invariance: 'No matter what one's station,  life will never go beyond meeting two-thirds of expectation.'

 

You're right PC. These are glum and rather penurious months of the year. No matter whether I was working, unemployed, or a student, I can never recall it being any different. T.S.Eliot showed lamentable judgement picking on poor April, if you ask me.

 

Those are very swish 'pits on your Spits. Nice work. :thumbsup2:

Tony

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6 minutes ago, TheBaron said:

You're right PC. These are glum and rather penurious months of the year. No matter whether I was working, unemployed, or a student, I can never recall it being any different. T.S.Eliot showed lamentable judgement picking on poor April, if you ask me.

 

Frankly, and I know it's cruel to say, as he was so proud of it, but "Wasteland" is not his best work. (I'm partial to "Choruses from 'The Rock'", myself.)

 

EDIT: And "Gerontion".

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5 minutes ago, CedB said:

Nice production line going on there PC and the internals look great! Spitfire envy is an embarrassing condition. I must take something :) 

Supermarine Viagra!

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