MDriskill

I'm interested in what the experts here think of the accuracy of this profile - I love the look, and would like to model it. But while this art has shown up in several publications...I've never seen a photo. The only shot I've seen of other similarly-painted a/c from this unit have some differences, starting with a Rotol prop, pale spinner finish, and no code letter...and then there's the Sky Grey vs. Sky question (the former in the profile).

I have nothing to contribute to this thread, other than to say how much I'm enjoying it! The detail knowledge and analytical expertise that Britmodeller brings to bear on this type of subject never ceases to amaze - VERY useful stuff for my next Spitfire purchase. (But I do have to say that as someone who started modeling in the 1960's...ANY of these kits would have had me hyperventilating in ecstasy 30 years or so ago!) I understand PatG's comment - but the issue is context. While I disagree (fine-tuned accuracy in 1/72 counts as much to me, as for any other scale), the idea of appropriate levels of detail for different scales would be an interesting discussion on its own. But when the OP - literally from the first words of the first post - dedicated this thread to his obviously labor-intensive and detailed comparison of 1/72 Spitfire kits, these comments instead come across as a little insulting, to him and to us interested in his results. It reminds me of all those well-meaning folks who will compliment a 1/72 model by saying it looks like a larger scale...apparently their default assumption is that nothing in 1/72 is worth looking at!

Ha - I was looking at that very photo in a book today, and it popped to mind when I saw the thread title. If you look closely, the Hurricane's spinner, tail band, and code letters are all pale blue. The Spitfires have different camo colors; both spinners and tail bands are Sky, but the "3" on the first one is blue.

As Troy Smith noted, the "official" directive was that underside camo was not required at all. But when and how this info filtered down to the myriad of subcontractors - who were doing most of the wing painting at that time - is no doubt an equal number of interesting individual stories. Wrapping paint around the leading edge, and painting the 190's prominent gear cover doors, nonetheless seem desirable for concealment whilst on the ground. But in my opinion, paint appearing further back under the front half of the wing was more about achieving a smooth finish of the wing skinning than camouflage (fitting the directive's "putty" exception). This is discussed at some length in the old wing painting thread linked above...so I'll leave my minority opinion here, lol...

...and WNr. 600xxx, Fieseler. As note above, the Fw 190 was a very "modular" aircraft. Typically the central fuselage, engine (including cowl), rear fuselage/vertical tail (with or without the Dora's extension section), wing, tailplanes, and landing gear were manufactured - and late in the war, usually painted - separately. And then possibly modified during final assembly, service, or passing through the repair / rebuild centers that were tasked to make flyable machines by any means possible. Have fun! 😀 For what it's worth, "Yellow 11" was the subject of a previous thread here...

You can also build this night fighter variant from the Eduard 1/72 kits. The antennae are included with the common parts in every version of the kit (sprue A). Their flashed-over mounting points (see below) are molded into all versions of Eduard's A-8 wings (sprues C, E, or H). Oddly, Eduard has not done a stand-alone night fighter boxing of the kit. It's covered only as an option in the "Royal Class" release from 2015 - the decals are again for Migge's A-8/R11 "White 9." Sprue C has the correct wing for this particular aircraft (found in the original A-8 Profipack kit, and Weekend and Overtrees "universal wing" releases).

Nice build - good to see this classic kit done up well. Yes...there were a few different releases of the little Hasegawa 190's (MACALAIN'S night fighter is the 6th from the top in the left column - kit 51305, first released in 1993)! This is most of the single releases with nice box art. There were also a couple oddball special issues, ten double-kit boxings with at least one 190 and fresh decals in more recent years, and a few with anime girls and goofy comic-book markings.

I am not familiar with that one, unfortunately. What kit is it intended for?

...AND a favorite aircraft, I'm thinking...! A build from my far-away feckless youth:

Very nice! That kit was the best around until the Hasegawa ones of the early 90's. I still have a couple on my shelf, good to see it done up so well.

This one was originally intended as an IPMS-USA "Out of the box" build; but no sooner did I get my cheesy "nothing-but-paint" cockpit sides, and "no see-through" bulkheads in place, than the new "Basic kit build" rules banned the latter! So - I tossed some 3D gadgets in the upper cockpit areas- and then the model morphed into a (not entirely sensible) exercise to improve this old kit's notable lack of detail. This was done as much as practicable via hand-done additions. Basic bits: Hataka Orange Line paints; several Skymodel and other decal sheets (NOTE: aftermarket 1/72 Italian decals are generally awful!). Weathering: layered paint; pin washes and light filtering in oils; colored pencils; and pastels. No aftermarket except Airone Hobby's Piaggio P.1001 propeller, and Eduard's PE inner gear door retraction nubbins. All else is scribed, punched, thinned kit parts, or scratched up from plastic sheet, foil, and wire. Markings represent Tenente Solaroli's well-known aircraft from 3 Stormo, a mid-production Breda build. I was struck how lightly weathered these desert warhorse a/c look in photos. The wing roots get grungy, but seldom any nasty exhaust stains or big leaks, and little paint chipping, even at high-wear points like cowl latches and panel edges. Italian paint, and maintenance standards, must have been very good. Random detail notes as keyed below: 1 Hats off to Vlad at Airone for the P.1001 prop - gorgeous! To my eye this is a must to capture the "look" of this beautiful aircraft 2 C.202's real life gun troughs typically got a black protective coating 3 Shortened the rear of the cowl to replicate the prominent gap here 4 Added or deepened panel lines all over the model 5 Added Dzus fasteners etc. in many locations 6 All white markings painted and reverse masked 7 Rescribed elevator tips to the early style 8 Reshaped the kit's awful sharp-edged flat wedge of an oil cooler 9 Reworked the supercharger intake and filter a bit 10 Enclosed the kit's shallow wheel wells and added a few gadgets...surprisingly, not a terrible representation of the enclosed wells on tropicalized a/c 11 Venturi from flared Albion brass tube 12 Radiator ended up with 18 new parts...grilles, fasteners, actuators, intake splitter, drain fitting, etc. 13 Pitot from Albion telescoping aluminum tube 14 More nose gadgets added 15 Entry steps from .005 card 16 Macchi interior canopy framing was typically painted black Not my best model ever - but one of the prettiest! I love Macchis and Italian WW2 stuff in general...and continue to dream of a better 1/72 C.202 kit.

Great old (and I do mean OLD lol) thread! Just to be clear, the replies abobe span two completely different generations of Eduard kits; it is the older ones with the difficult full engine and gun bay detail, the new ones are more accurate and much simpler. In this old 190 nut's opinion, the current Eduards are the clear winner for any radial-engine variant. But to my eye the Hasegawa kits are still worthwhile, along with the Tamiya A-8 / F-8. Tamiya's A-3 has some weird missteps though, definitely go Eduard for the early short-nose variants. I loved the old Monogram A-5 as a kid. The only area they really muffed accuracy-wise, in my opinion, was the lower cowl shape and missing underside exhausts. The best point may be the engineering of gear struts guaranteeing perfect alignment, which others should study! Nothing looks worse than a 190 with wonky gear...

AL254 was a Martlet Mk I...an earlier, and quite different, beast from the USN "dash 3." The Mk I had a single-row Cyclone engine (vs. 2-row Twin Wasp), shorter canopy, different gun arrangement, and other small diffs. AZ makes a passable 1/72 kit of it, in two different box art/decal guises: https://www.azmodel.cz/produkt/martlet-mk-i-g-36/ https://www.azmodel.cz/produkt/martlet-mk-i/ Winkle also flew the Martlet Mk II (though I don't know specific markings), which is a relatively short jump from the USN F4F-4. Hasegawa and Arma have both done very good quality 1/72 "dash 4" kits with Mk II conversion bits and decals included. https://www.scalemates.com/kits/hasegawa-51370-martlet-mkii-royal-navy--136613 https://www.armahobby.com/70047-f4f-4-wildcat-expert-set.html You might find this ongoing thread-zilla of interest. There is a separate dedicated Mk I thread, access to Jumpei Temma's top-class drawings, and much more linked within.

The landing flap is the same length on the models 11, 21, 32, and 22. It is the aileron which differs on the model 32 - its inner end moved outboard by one wing rib bay. The model 52 and subsequent A6M's were heavier aircraft, and extended the flap outboard by one wing rib bay to reduce landing speed. The inner end of the aileron is thus in the same location as the model 32.

Not a very "scientific" reply, but the B6N was of course conceived as the successor to the B5N Kate. Kates were definitely used as level bombers - most famously for dropping the armor-piercing one that was the fatal blow to the Arizona at Pearl Harbor. I don't own it, but given the high quality of recent Osprey titles, I'd be willing to bet these questions are very well covered here:

In addition to the vast amount of material online (these spots for instance)... https://www.largescaleplanes.com/articles/article.php?aid=2750 https://www.themodellingnews.com/2014/06/review-build-messerschmitts-late-war.html https://forum.largescaleplanes.com/index.php?/topic/71741-revell-132-bf109g-10-erla/ ...there was literally a book written about it.

...and in my dreams, they add the once-promised fourth volume of drawings and technical data. 😪

Grognard: an old soldier; specifically one of Napoleon's Imperial Guard that made the last charge at Waterloo. We old Tennessee hillbillies always learn cool new words when Graham posts! 😃

I have a BUNCH of Fw 190 references, and can endorse the Aero Detail and Squadron Walk Around mentioned above. The Osprey is good too but suffers from age (I can relate 🙄), in the sense that many of the kits used no longer have latest-and-greatest status. I also like the Valiant book on the 190. This has been criticized for numerous errors, especially in photo captions (and one drawing goof relevant to your big Airfix: the A-6 did NOT have the rectangular "flat bulges" over the outer-wing gun bays. Those were introduced for A-7 "Sturmbocks" and standardized during A-8 production). BUT...on the plus side, the sheer quantity of information crammed between its covers is truly impressive: history; variants; color profiles; wartime photos; lots of detail pics (yes including cockpits); old manual drawings; model builds; excellent succinct kit reviews; fold-out 1/48 drawings; extensive lists of kits, decals, and accessories; and more. https://www.valiant-wings.co.uk/airframe--miniature-no7-second-edition-73-p.asp Flawed, but IMHO the most outstanding one-stop-shopping value in Fw 190 references - and a favorite to pack along on holiday, like having half my 190 library with me. Out of print now but should still be fairly easy to find.

Can't add much to the excellent notes above! But, according to the Aero Detail book on the Zero, all A6M3's - both the model 32 and later model 22 with "long" wing restored - were manufactured by Mitsubishi. Nakajima kept producing A6M2's until transitioning directly to the A6M5 in November 1943.

The Valiant book on the Hurricane has similar, and more recent, info. But I am far from a Hurricane guru, and make no claims as to its accuracy or completeness... 🙄

In my opinion, the nature of the book is such that it would be of similar value in either format.

Yes, I have one, and got it through Amazon. But I've read it's a sort of limited-production thing where copies are printed as needed from electronic files.

You might find it very interesting to obtain a copy of this recent book: Per the title, it analyzes late-war Fw 190A's and F's constructed by Norddeutsche Dornier Werke. It goes literally to another level from most books, describing every facility sub-contracting components for NDW, and the finishes they applied (typically, the wing, main fuselage, rear fuselage + fin, tailplanes, and cowl were all assembled and painted separately). Fascinating stuff - and future titles for Arado, Fieseler, and AGO are planned. One does note a lot of Fw 190's with very pale and thinly-applied paint in the late days; often the dark rivet heads "telegraph" through to be quite visible. My personal opinion is that no 190's with truly unpainted fuselages saw active service on any organized basis, but, you know...I've been wrong before! No doubt a lot of non-standard stuff went on at assembly and repair facilities near the end.

Thanks for the chance to exercise a minor obsession, LOL. 😁 I've been an amateur Wildcat fan for many years and the G-36A / Martlet I is very interesting. It was the first F4F variant to enter service - preceding the US Navy's F4F-3 by several months - and has several features that are really more like some of the prototype aircraft. And if it helps...it would be a much shorter walk from an Eduard F4F-4 to a Martlet Mk II...! The Mk II was also a pioneer - the first folding-wing variant in service - with a fascinating operational history and some minor tweaks in details over time.