LJK

Hi Alan, The things you mentioned are good to keep in mind, to avoid misinterpreting what one sees in photos. Especially the paint applied below the waterline. The RNZAF Sunderland flypast is certainly as low as you can get, short or crashing! As it's a flying boat, maybe we could say she ran aground... Regards, Jukka

I keep following this interesting thread and the progress of Neil's Sunderland, which is coming along nicely. One thing I intended to post earlier is a small addition to what has been written here about the Sunderland's exterior and interior finishes. I don't know how many of you used to read Ian Huntley's column in Scale Aircraft Modelling, but for me he was a great inspiration. In Vol.3 No.4 (Dec 1981) his column was entitled British Maritime Finishes 1934-1940. What he wrote about the mid-1930s metal-hulled boats like the Stranraer and the Singapore Mk.III is of course not directly concerned with the Sunderland but is probably relevant to early Sunderlands at least: "The metal hulls were largely constructed from light-alloy sheet and all such material was given anodic protective treatment prior to assembly. The whole of the interior, including the inside face of the skinning, was also painted separately in Grey Green 34226: 27D3. All parts were 'wet' assembled with Duralac or some other jointing compound, and certain areas were then finally sprayed with Aluminium cellulose enamel after assembly so that any ingress of water could be more easily seen. The metal wing and tail structures were similarly treated before fabric covering. The hull exteriors were also finished in Aluminium, often with a clear anti-fouling lacquer applied to the below water-line areas." Huntley then goes on to describe late 1930s RAF camouflage experiments for flying boats and so on. Definitely interesting and also relevant to the Sunderland, but I'd surely be infringing copyright if I quoted further paragraphs here... Hope this's of interest to someone. Cheers, Jukka

Hi Trevor, You found Steinar Saevdal's excellent site. Yes, the Seabee looks a bit odd. From certain angles you'd almost be hard pressed to tell it's an aeroplane, at least with the wing removed. This is OH-EGA photographed by me a couple of years ago at the Vesivehmaa storage hangar near Lahti, Finland. Cheers, Jukka

Alan, your Airfix Sunderland project is stunning. Hope we'll the finished article soon! Best wishes, Jukka

Hi Alan, Thanks for yet another useful message. Any word of advice/warning about differences between different marks is welcome, especially when it's about details not easily spotted. No problem about your previous reply about the "suspect porthole". I just wanted to make clear what we are talking about, for the benefit of anyone happening to read this thread, so that people know what to correct and what not if they are interested in getting things right. As to why Italeri have added a porthole that shouldn't be there at all, what about the old Aviation News scale drawings mentioned earlier in this thread? I haven't seen them, but would they also have that error? Just a guess on my part, of course. Cheers, Jukka

Hi Alan, Thanks for your thorough reply. So, what's behind the Fantasy of Flight Sunderland's instrument panel shouldn't be taken as a guide to what military Sunderlands were like. That presumably applies to much of the flight deck? On to the porthole issue. In fact I have no problem with the porthole you mean, and neither has Italeri. It's marked on the inside of the kit's hull and the instructions tell you to open it up. Italeri have realised, correctly, that it's not a feature of Mk.III, which they seem to be planning for. It's the other one 1 cm further back and higher up, almost touching the wing leading edge, that I'm suggesting shouldn't be there at all, on any mark, on the starboard side. Cheers, Jukka

Ed, I'm also interested in T9072 and have made some enquiries elsewhere. 29.09.41 is given as its official date of transfer to 10 Sqn by more than one source. Whether the aircraft went to the Gambia with 204 Sqn I cannot say. Jim Halley's The Squadrons of the Royal Air Force book gives 28.08.41 as 204's transfer date to Bathurst, after a short spell in Gibraltar. That would have left exactly a month for T9072 to serve in West Africa. As to the kangaroo, there's a photo of T9072 as KG-F with the artwork in place. The photo has been printed in, for example, Chaz Bowyer's Sunderland At War (p. 51) and Chris Ashworth's RAF Coastal Command book (p. 45; Patrick Stephens Ltd, 1992). I believe it also appeared in the Scale Aircraft Modelling magazine's Sunderland in Detail feature, but I haven't got it at hand now. The fact that Bowyer's caption claims the photo to have been taken at Bathurst, whereas the location almost certainly was Iceland, doesn't alter the fact that the kangaroo was there before T9072's transfer to 10 Sqn RAAF, which is an interesting coincidence. Having said that, I couldn't have told it's a kangaroo just by looking at the photo. Sunderland At War has another photo claimed by the caption to show T9072 in the Gambia. This time the aircraft is being worked on while on water, and the clothes of the men suggest it could indeed be at Bathurst. Problem is, the serial is far too blurred to be readable and even the individual aircraft letter is not necessarily 'F'. In my opinion it could just as well be 'E'. Hopefully we'll yet get proof of T9072's movements in August-September 1941. Cheers, Jukka

Hi, My first 'real' post to Britmodeller (apart from the new member greeting, that is), and it's all about what's on the normally unseen side of the Sunderland's instrument panel... I cannot add anything to the spaghetti seen from above but, in case anyone is interested, I have tried to photograph what you see from below. This I did at Fantasy of Flight, Florida, three years ago. http://www.flickr.co...157631836568105 I can't say how representative that part of G-BJHS/ML814 is of wartime Sunderlands. Otherwise this particular 'boat has been modified quite extensively, of course. Here's a link to the entire set: When I photographed the flight deck from beneath the instrument panel, I simply lifted my camera and snapped away at something I didn't really see. The quality is not terrific and what you see is confusing at first, but I've tried to make the file names self-explanatory. This is an interesting thread that will be extremely useful for anyone building the Italeri Sunderland, myself included. One thing I haven't seen mentioned is the round window added by Italeri on the starboard side immediately under the wing leading edge. A similarly located window is on the port side, quite correctly, but I haven't seen any photo of the real thing, of any Mark, that shows one on the right side. Unless someone can provide evidence to the contrary, I'll get rid of that window in my kit. Cheers, Jukka