Kits World decals, how accurate are they?

[Vicarage Vee]

Without wanting to twist the knife, but....  Things like their Op Granby Tornado sheets being described as being Tornado GR4s and GR1B doesn't really engender confidence.

 

Edited February 8, 2019 by Vicarage Vee

[AaCee26]

6 hours ago, Antti_K said:

<clip>word "MIEHISTÖSUKSET" (Crew skis) was applied on the fuselage hatch (port side). I'm not sure whether captain H. Kalaja's Hurricane had the ski markings.

IIRC the skies hatch was a Continuation War period modification in overhauls and HC-456 was not went to it so I think it is not applicable to Capt. Kalaja's mount.

 

Cheers,

 

AaCee

[Vicarage Vee]

I believe that there is another inaccuracy in the B-17 sheet that includes 44-6585 'Commando Chief' of the 423rd BS 306th BG, and it would seem that a typo is the likely source.

The squadron colour on the tail and the propeller bosses should be blue, not green.  However, Roger Freeman's The Mighty Eighth Warpaint and Heraldry does state that the 369th BS was blue and the 423rd green.

But, a colour picture of 43-39116 'Naughty Nancy' of the 423rd in The Mighty Eighth The Colour Record shows blue propeller bosses and artwork clearly by the same artist as 'Commando Chief'.  Furthermore, in Roger Freeman's original 'The Mighty Eighth' the colours are described as bright green for the 369th and medium blue for the 423rd.  In addition, there is a photograph of 42-31143 'Satan's Lady' of the 369th, albeit somewhat ironically in b/w, in the Squadron/Signal Fighting Colours booklet B-17 Flying Fortress in Colour where the fin tip does not appear dark enough for blue and the text states that the squadron colour was green.

I seem to recall that the 306th BG website as it was back in the early 'naughties' and now heavily revised/replaced had illustrations of the fins for each BS too.

 

The point of all that diatribe?  That even with such a prolific and respected author as Roger Freeman you have to be aware that mistakes in text will occur in such a large volume of work and that it pays to check and double check. This is fine if you are researching and creating a scheme yourself, all errors are your own and yours to live with, but when you are offering things commercially, and at quite a price compared to other manufacturers, people might just expect you to go the extra mile to get it right.

 

Edited to say that Kitsworld also produce a sheet for 'Naughty Nancy' which has the wrong, green, tail flash and appears to have blue propeller bosses.  These should match. These may only be errors in the illustrations and instructions and the decals themselves being mostly black and white and 'stars and bars' (which are relatively simple to source or replicate anyway) are correct, but at £10.20 for a sheet that only has decals for two 1/72nd aircraft, to my mind this isn't really value for money.

Edited February 9, 2019 by Vicarage Vee

[stevehnz]

I've just today taken delivery of some Kitsworld decals as a result of a build thread by Stewdapple & a few minutes googling showed me the camo instructions were plain wrong. I'm not knocking Kitsworld. their decals look superb but their instructions show signs on some of being a bit research light. It would pay to do your own I think. My results at the end of that thread.

Steve.

 

[NPL]

But is this not a general problem for decals? That the research has often been-- shall we say -- a bit sloppy? I have stored away some egregious examples, like 'Ceram' 

I can quote from my little study leaving out illustrations because of  eventual copyright problems:

 

‘Ceram’, the Indian, Who Disappeared (P8342)

A quite hilarious exemple showing the failure of even the most serious research has to do with the Indian who disappeared. AMD 48-122, Spitfire Mk.V Collection Pt. II, belongs to the early part of Aeromaster’s production:

From the war there is a well-known photo of the damaged aeroplane: 

 

 

What is problematic? First of all the colour scheme is wrong. Early versions were painted in Dark Earth and Dark Green according to two patterns, A and B, having B as the mirror image of A. The photo shows that UZ&N was in the A-pattern, but AMD’s instructions provide a B-pattern. Secondly, from the back to the front: RAF-marcations on the tail are in AMD’s reproduction too high. The serial number has the wrong style and not as pronounced as on the photo. The code letters on the photo are broader and especially the shape of the ‘U’ is absolutely different from the one included on AMD’s sheet. The Indian in front of the cockpit seems relatively well presented but in the wrong place on the sheet. It should have been placed higher up than presented.

 

The Portuguese company Colorado (former Carpena) has a better offer when it comes to the shape of the code letters. They are broader but the U is still not correct. 

Their Indian is primitive and the small inscription ‘CERAM’ below the Indian is missing. On top of that the producer must have suffered from a total black-out when he presented the aeroplane with French markings.

 

Maybe the best offer from this period was presented by the Czech company Techmod on one of their early sheets.

 

Well, this was the situation until a few years ago when Nico Geldhof and Luuk Boerman produced a booklet, De ‘Indische’ Spitfires. Our Mk.Vb is not at all a Mk.Vb but a Mk.IIb and belongs to a small selection of Spitfires donated by the Dutch inhabitants of Eastern Asia. There is no Indian to be found on the plane, but the figure represents a clown driving a one-wheeled bicycle, and shooting a bow. The best quality renderings of the photo show that this is actually the correct interpretation.

 

The only problem left: Does the clown turn his face forward, or is he looking at us, the spectators? It seems that he is looking forward. Techmod choose the second option on their revision of the sheet mentioned above.

 

The golden rule still applies: Work on the basis of photos whenever it is possible. Use your own eyes and not others.

 

Other examples I studied at the same time is Molland's diligence and Levine's sculls.

[Merlin 28]

Good range which seem to be always available, have only used one decal sheet from them (the same Lanc as my Avatar picture ED666, WS-G) nicely printed and easy to use though the red for the A/C codes are far to bright a red and the letters/figures for the A/C serials seem a bit on the big side. Its difficult to be entirely accurate for some aircraft this aircraft is a case in point where no side view pictures exist, IX used a smaller identification letter on some of their aircraft W4964 shows a smaller and uniquely shaped 'J' ED666 came on Squadron at around the same time as W4964 so its difficult to be conclusive without hard evidence which ED666 had.            

Edited February 9, 2019 by Merlin 28