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Supermarine Spitfire Mk.Ia (A05126A) 1:48 Airfix The Spitfire is perhaps one of the best known and well-loved aircraft in Britain, and deservedly so for its work in the Battle of Britain alongside the doughty Hurricane. It thrived in its point-defence role, and shone during its finest hour, the through many versions and types to the end of WWII and beyond. The Mk.I was predictably the first in-service type, and sported eight .303 Browning machine guns, and by the time hostilities commenced in 1939 many of them were using the blown canopies that gave the pilot a better field of view with less likelihood of smacking his head against the glazing. Fairly soon it was understood that the Brownings didn’t have enough destructive power, and the Ministry asked for a cannon wing to be developed, with those airframes being referred to as Mk.Ibs, and the original machine gun armed airframes retrospectively designated Mk.Ia to prevent confusion. As the early cannon installations were prone to jamming, sometimes it would have been better to have the more reliable smaller bullets than bigger ones you couldn't fire. The Mk.I was superseded by the Mk.II, Mk.III, and then the Mk.V due to the introduction of the Fw.190 by the Germans that gave the British Spitfire pilots a nasty shock when they first encountered it. The Mk.V gave them the extra horsepower to cope with these pugnacious little fighters, and so the tactical leapfrog continued to the end of the war with the Mk.22/24 being the last mark of the Spitfire with cut-down fuselage, bubble canopy and the monstrous power of the Griffon engine at the front. The Kit This is a reboxing of Airfix’s recent Mk.I that has been given new decals and box art to depict it as the retrospectively named Mk.Ia. It arrives in a standard Airfix red-themed top-opening box, with five sprues of light grey styrene inside, a clear sprue, decal sheet and the spot-colour instructions that have a colour painting guides on the rear pages. It brings with it all the detail you would expect from a recent Airfix tooling, and the knowledge that if you want more detail, the aftermarket industry will be there to help you out if you don’t fancy the DIY option. Construction begins with the cockpit interior, which consists of two inner skins that are decorated with the usual items we all know and recognise instantly. The pilot's seat is made from an L-shaped seat with separate sides, which can either be mounted on an armour panel or without one, with both having the adjustment lever on the right side. The frame behind the pilot has moulded-in lightening holes that you can either fill with wash or drill out at your whim, then add the seat frame and optional head-armour, finally fitting the seat to the frame on its four corners. The rudder pedal assembly goes through a section of the wing spar and has separate pedals that you should leave off if you are intending to fit the pilot, and the control column with separate top is planted in the middle of the sub-assembly. The instrument panel is glued to the next frame forward and has a nice decal with just the dials printed and an outline to help locate it correctly on the panel. A little decal solution should help that to settle down into the recesses nicely. The compass attaches to the rear of the panel, and is then inserted into the port cockpit side along with the rudder pedal assembly and a lever, allowing the two halves to be joined and a front firewall bulkhead to be fitted to close in the foot well. Then the seat assembly and next frame to the rear are slotted into the grooves, and your optional pilot with his two separate arms can be plonked in if you’re using him. Before inserting the cockpit tub you need to paint the interior of the fuselage above the waistline, and remove a small part of the sill if you are posing the canopy closed. Then it slips inside the starboard fuselage half along with an oxygen bottle, and the port side is joined up together with an insert in front of the canopy, which is where the fuel tank filler is found. You can also cut out the access door on the left side of the fuselage, bearing in mind that you have a new door on the sprue so you can be a bit brutal in removing the plastic. The wings are built next, and you have the option of opening up three of the four gun bays by cutting out three panels on the top and one larger one on the underside, using the instructions as a guide on where to cut. The full-width lower wing has two circular bay walls fitted along with a section of the front spar, which holds the landing gear top sections, before the rear spar and front extensions are also attached to stiffen the wing. If you are fitting the guns they are built up as breeches and mounts, then slipped into recesses within the spar, with a pair of boxes straddling the lower cutout. If you’re not cutting out the gun bays, it’s just a case of popping on the upper wings and moving on to joining them to the fuselage after making sure you’ve fitted the light in the belly first. The elevator fins are slotted into the tail at 90o to the rudder fin, then the flying surfaces are added with any deflections that you might wish to portray, remembering that some smart-alec will always complain if you don’t also offset the control column and rudder pedals too. The ailerons are also separate and can be posed with the same caveats applied. Under the nose the chin-insert is glued in, noting the Dzuz fastenings there and on the side cowlings. They could possibly stand a very slight flatting down to look less like semi-flush donuts, but maybe that’s just me. Under the leading edge of the wing there is a two-part intake, then the square radiator bath with textured radiator panels and tubular oil-cooler are added to their recesses, with optional open or closed cooling flaps on the rear of the radiator. The tail wheel was fixed in the Mk.I, so slots into a hole in the tail, and you then have the choice of wheels up or down. In-flight a small portion of the wheels can still be seen, so Airfix have provided a slim wheel to put on the doors so that a realistic look is obtained. For the wheels down option, you have separate struts and doors, which slot into the top-sections already within the bay and have a pair of tyres with separate hubs added, making sure that the slightly flattened section is facing the floor. A pair of scrap diagrams show the correct angles from the front and sides to help with positioning. A choice of straight or kinked pitot probe goes under the wing, then the exhaust stubs are glued into the nose, and joined by a one-piece triple-bladed prop, two-part spinner, and three parts that permit the prop to spin if you don’t flood it with glue. You then have a choice of open or closed canopies, using a three-part assembly plus rear-view mirror for open, and two-part plus mirror for closed. You did remember to paint and fit the clear reflector gunsight, didn’t you? The open option also allows the door to be posed down, which as previously mentioned uses a new part. There is a choice of wide or narrow aerial mast behind the cockpit with small teardrop light, and then if you’ve cut open the gun bays, there are four bay doors on each side that you can place on the wings or nearby. Markings There are two decal options in the box, and predictably they are both from the early part of the war in 1939/40. From the box you can build one of the following: Flown by Sergeant Arthur William Peter Spears, No.222 Sqn., RAF Hornchurch, Essex, England, August 30th 1940 No.611 (West Lancashire) Sqn., RAF Duxford, Cambridgeshire, England, Autumn 1939 Decals are by Cartograf, which is a guarantee of good registration, sharpness and colour density, with a thin gloss carrier film cut close to the printed areas. Conclusion A welcome reboxing of this recent tool from Airfix, and the early black/white identification markings are kind of cool. Detail is good, and you’ll be left with a number of spare canopy parts for the parts bin. Highly recommended. Review sample courtesy of

Hi again everybody! Here is my second black and white airplane – Hurricane Mk.I in the colours of 87th Squadron in the autumn of 1939 in France. On 10th November 1939 this particular machine (L1619, squadron code LK-P) was flown by Plt Off Horatio Dunn. He chased a Luftwaffe reconnaissance aircraft but went too far from the airbase and ran out of fuel. Dunn made an emergency landing near Aalbeke in Belgium. He was caught by the Belgian police and imprisoned but managed to escape from the Belgian prison on 27th November and returned to his base. The Hurricane was interned by the Belgians as well, however its fate is not known. The German aircraft that Dunn chased (Do-17P) incurred some damage and crash-landed near Stuttgart killing all crew. The link to a photo of L1619 after landing in Belguim Airfix kit is very well known and truly nice to build. The only substantial issue I had was with the wing. It seems that the upper and lower parts have different dihedral The upper part is correct while the lower part has dihedral in excess. I cut joint tabs and pressed the two parts to match dihedral to the upper part. This resulted in a lower side being 1 mm longer than the upper one on both ends. I simply sanded excessive plastic. Also some surgery was needed to properly insert landing lights. To make things prettier I used Eduard’s PE for the cockpit, resin wheels and exhausts. Paints are same as for my Defiant - Hobby Color for the camo and Vallejo for almost everything else. Decals are by Xtradecal + stencils by Aviaeology. And here the two black-and-white RAF warriors together: Thanks for looking! Hope you enjoy Dennis