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"Qu'il avoit cainte Escalibor, la meillor espee qui fust, qu'ele trenche fer come fust." [For at his belt hung Excalibur, the finest sword that there was, which sliced through iron as through wood.] -- Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval, le Conte du Graal (c.12th century) On 3 September 1944, eight Spitfire XIIs of 41 Squadron laden with 90-gallon "slipper" tanks took off from Lympne on Ranger A10, a deep penetration sweep in the Liege area, lead by Flight Lieutenant Terry Spencer at the head of Black Section. Over Louvain, with 7/10ths cloud all the way down to 4,500 feet, Spencer ordered White Section to remain up as top cover and took the four Spitfires of his own section down to look for trade. Almost immediately, Flight Lieutenant Bill Stowe spotted a trio of Fw190A-8s from Stab II./JG26, lead by Hauptmann Emil "Bully" Lang, a so-called "experte" with 173 victory claims, though all but 28 of these were from the Eastern Front; Lang was accompanied by the 52-claim ace Leutnant Alfred Goss, and Unteroffizier Hans-Joachim Borreck. The three aircraft were following the rest of JG26 in its ignominious flight east from Brussels-Melsbroek to Dusseldorf, ahead of the annihilating wave of the Allied ground advance, then in full swing. Lang's aircraft had mechanical difficulties, which had delayed his takeoff. Possibly, had he more than four months experience of the Western Front and what the RAF and USAAF were capable of, Lang would have been more circumspect about risking a daytime ferry flight in an aircraft with mechanical difficulties. The Spitfires swooped in to attack. Flight Lieutenant Spencer got behind Lang immediately and opened fire, but Leutnant Goss, flying #2 to Lang, began shooting at Spencer's Spitfire, hitting the starboard wing and elevator before Spencer brought the Spitfire's superior turning ability into play, pulling into a sharp turn to port that the Fw190 was unable to follow. Lang, too, had broken to port, and Spencer found himself again behind the German ace. With 1 and 1/2 rings deflection, Spencer opened fire again, and Lang's undercarriage, which had previously taken ten minutes to retract after he'd gotten airborne, dropped, slowing the Fw190 dramatically. Spencer gave Lang another long burst (he was found to have expended 220 rounds of 20mm and 840 rounds of .303, out of a total of 240 and 1200, respectively), and the butcher bird burst into flames and smashed itself to pieces upon the ground. It was Spencer's first victory over a manned aircraft. While all of this was happening, Warrant Officer Peter Chattin had engaged and damaged the Fw190 of Unteroffizier Borreck (who subsequently force-landed after his windscreen became obscured by oil), but was in turn shot down by Leutnant Goss; Chattin tried to belly-land his Spitfire, but died of a serious head injury, presumably from hitting his face on his gunsight during the landing, although it's not impossible that he was in fact murdered by the German soldiers who recovered his body, as subsequent information may suggest. He had two children, a son aged four years and a daughter only nine months old. Goss didn't have long to enjoy his victory, as the Flight Lieutenant Bill Stowe and his wingman, Warrant Officer Coleman turned in like medieval knights at a joust and attacked Goss's Fw190 head on in succession; Goss appears to have been attempting an Immelman turn, first dropping his nose to gain speed and then pulling up vertically, but he miscalculated badly, and went up directly in front of Coleman at a range of thirty yards. Coleman, who would ultimately end the war with five victories plus two shared, made the most of his opportunity, and gave the Fw190 everything he had at point blank range. Goss bailed out of his stricken aircraft, but was then shot and severely wounded in his parachute by German soldiers on the ground; he never flew again and died of TB in 1947. These two aerial victories were the only ones scored by 41 Squadron in all of 1944, and the last two aircraft shot down by Spitfire XIIs ever; at the time, Spencer and Coleman were the only two pilots in the squadron to have shot down enemy aircraft while with 41 (though Spencer had shot down a number of V-1s while on anti-Diver patrols, inlcuding one knocked down with his wingtip on 9 August 1944). They had permanently removed two German aces with combined claims of 225 Allied aircraft from the war, saving countless Allied lives. Subsequently, Terry Spencer had a fascinating career as a photojournalist (including following the then largely-unknown Beatles about in 1962) and married the film actress Leslie Brook, a union which lasted 62 years; they died within twenty-four hours of each other in 2009. He never shot down another aircraft after Lang. 41 Squadron is profoundly unusual among WWII-era RAF squadrons in that it's the beneficiary of a sweeping and comprehensively-researched two-volume squadron history by Steve Brew, both volumes of which I have, and either one of which, thrown with sufficient force, could stun or possibly even kill an adult water buffalo. This is rather helpful when researching stuff like this, though unfortunately there are few good photographs of the aircraft. I have decided to build Spencer's Spitfire XII on Ranger A10, EB-B/MB882; here she is in all her glory. 16807657_1429648753726599_7063633498269721299_n by Edward IX, on Flickr In September of 1944 when operating over the continent, she would surely have worn invasion stripes, and of course, if you wondered about something, Britmodeller has a thread about it. It would appear they were underside only, which is fine by me. I'll be using the Xtrakit Spitfire XII, which is of course a Sword kit, the prototype of all subsequent Sword Spitfire kits, and mighty rough it is, too. It's been a long time since I built an Xtrakit XII, but let's hop in the wayback machine and see what it looked like way back in 2011: 333717_272714309420055_1162695243_o by Edward IX, on Flickr Oh dear. My first task was to take my trusty micro-chisel and scrape out the many ejector pins that would prevent closure of the wings and fuselage: 20180918_221957 by Edward IX, on Flickr Then some test-fitting, something I expect to do a shedload of with this build. In fact, if you don't like test-fitting, let me save you some time: you won't like building Sword Spitfires. 20180918_222336 by Edward IX, on Flickr This actually looks a bit better than it is. 20180918_222352 by Edward IX, on Flickr Great. Even though it only causes pain and misery, I opted to box in the wheel wells with the kit parts: 20180918_232046 by Edward IX, on Flickr They are far too tall, as they are on all Sword kits, and will need murderous sanding down that will probably ultimately defeat the point of including them. I also drilled out the locating holes for the landing gear -- Sword/Xtrakit had left one totally filled in and the other too small to admit the landing gear (the last time around, I discovered this only when it was time to add the gear, a memory of defeat and frustration that has stuck with me these seven years.