Giorgio N Posted June 13, 2018 Share Posted June 13, 2018 It is an undisputed matter of fact that there's quite a connection between Irish and Italian people. In general they love each other, maybe it's because of Catholicism, most likely it's because of a number of similarities in their approach to the joys of life. Who knows, maybe it's because Trapattoni was Ireland's football team manager for some time while Liam Brady left great memories in both Juventus and Inter ! There could be other reasons but it's a fact that Dublin is one of the preferred destinations for Italian tourists and a good number of Irish tourists visit Rome and other Italian cities. It is also an undisputed matter of fact that both countries have had some troublesome relations with Britain but they have afterall been good commercial partner and a lot of products have been moving between both countries and Britain, including aircrafts and other weapons. And this brings us to another thing that Italy and Ireland have in common: both countries used the DH Vampire as their main combat type ! Ok, this is not really surprising since the Vampire gave many air forces their first taste of jet air power and I could have chosen many other countries to show some unusual markings on DH's great little fighter. There is however one good reason for me to choose these two countries and it is another Italo-Irish connection: both have been places where I've lived ! So as an Italian born modeller who lived several years in Ireland, building both models in parallel made perfect sense to me . The history of why and how each Country used the Vampire will be told during the build, let's for the moment just show which kits I'll be using, kits that will have to differ as the two countries used different variants. Scale will be the same though, 1/72 for both. Italy built the FB.5 under DH licence ( a lot more info will follow...) and the kit I chose is the recent Special Hobby offering, here in the Azur branded box for aircrafts used by France (another large user of the Vampire) The Irish Air Corps on the other hand selected the two-seater T.55, an export variant of the RAF T.11, and for this variant the best option is the Airfix kit Decals for the Irish machine will come from one of Max Decals sheets, those for the Italian aircraft will come from assorted Tauromodel and other sheets 15 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Threadbear Posted June 13, 2018 Share Posted June 13, 2018 a Great write up! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandboof Posted June 13, 2018 Share Posted June 13, 2018 Great pair Will be watching Martin H 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevej60 Posted June 14, 2018 Share Posted June 14, 2018 Great choices Giorgio look forward to these two. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wez Posted June 17, 2018 Share Posted June 17, 2018 Fabulous, love Vampire's, easily one of the most attractive and colourful of the early jets and one I have many of in the stash including several of both of these kits. It's a shame there's no one stop shop decal sheet for a selection of Italian Vampires though 😞 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dermo245 Posted June 20, 2018 Share Posted June 20, 2018 On 6/13/2018 at 1:37 PM, Threadbear said: a Great write up! Indeed! I can confirm that everything Giorgio said there is spot on! 😊 Cheers, Dermot 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giorgio N Posted June 21, 2018 Author Share Posted June 21, 2018 (edited) Thanks everyone, glad the subject is of interest ! And thanks to Dermot for confirming my introduction 😁 Time to start showing some plastic.. and of course telling some twin-boom stories ! Based on strictly temporal order, the first to feature is the Italian Vampire The story of the Vampire in Italy starts in 1948, with Italy a country still under the limitations of the peace treaties that followed WW2. These treaties had reduced the local air force to a maximum of 200 aircrafts of all types and included a ban on all bombers. Relations between Italy and Britain were actually not bad for a number of reasons. For a starter the Co-Belligerance years had brought many in the armed forces to forge close links with British airmen and soldiers and those years had resulted in a high reciprocal respect. Then there were the plans that Britain had for the post war years... The Mediterranean had always been very important for Britain and for some, like Churchill, it was almost an obsession. Many in Britain looked with benign eyes to Italy, aiming at asserting British influence over the Country. The fact that the reigning house of Savoy was very well connected and respected also had some influence among British foreign policy makers. Britain was determined to be a world power again and Italy and the med. were one of the areas to start from. We know today how reality ended up being different and this also affected the history of the Italian Vampires... in more than one sense ! Back to aircrafts, our story starts with Italian Air Force chief, General Ajmone Cat, who had been commander of the Cobelligerant Air Force in WW2 and had many friends in London. During a visit to SBAC in 1948 he first came in contact with the Vampire and saw how this could have been the perfect aircraft to bring the Air Force into the jet age. At the time there were two views among the Air Force top brass, one favouring the purchase of foreign types and the other preferring the indigenous development of a new type. Clearly the latter was a difficult path and for this reason it was quite easy to go for a foreign type. The possibility of producing in Italy under license would have been even better and it was with this idea that the Italians approached a number of possible suppliers. Britain offered both the Vampire and the Meteor while the US only offered the F-80, clearly stating that the more modern types then being introduced in service (F-84 and F-86) would have not been available. Of the three types on offer the Meteor was the more expensive and was discarded. The F-80 was not considered a great aircraft while the Vampire impressed many for both the flying qualities and the production potential. So che choice was made, the Vampire would have been the new fighter of the Italian Air Force ! The rest of the story of the Italian Vampires will follow during the build.. and I promise that there will be some surprises ! Oh, and don't forget the F-80, this and other things I've mentioned will come back in our story. After this introduction, let's see some plastic... the Special Hobby kit is very nice and has been made available under various brands. My box is from Azur, one of the many brands of the Special Hobby/MPM galaxy. Azur kits tend to focus on French subjects and this box is no exception, being dedicated to the FB.5 in French service. The various options made possible by the decal sheet are printed on the back of the box: The kit features nice surface detail, not as good as Japanese or Korean kits but nonetheless very acceptable. The general level of detail is good, again not a superdetailed kit but pretty good. Parts are moulded sharply enough... should I repeat myself and say not a Japanese kit but very acceptable nonetheless ? A very nice feature is the inclusion of the rocket launchers ! A bad feature is the shape of the intakes.... this has been discussed in other threads on this same forum, more recent reboxes have revised and corrected intakes, unfortunately mine has the original ones. I may replace them with resin copies of the Airfix parts or simply leave them as they are... Clear parts are very nice while the decal sheet offers, as said before, only French subjects. Some of these however have English stencils and these will be useful to build an Italian aircraft Edited June 21, 2018 by Giorgio N 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete in Lincs Posted June 21, 2018 Share Posted June 21, 2018 Just a small bit of information to add. Years ago in Riyadh on the RSAF air base I came across a large wooden packing case full of Vampire tail booms. They all had Italian build/information tags. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giorgio N Posted June 22, 2018 Author Share Posted June 22, 2018 13 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said: Just a small bit of information to add. Years ago in Riyadh on the RSAF air base I came across a large wooden packing case full of Vampire tail booms. They all had Italian build/information tags. Very interesting ! The Saudi Vampires were former Egyptian aircrafts and these were indeed Italian built. The story of the Egyptian aircrafts is very interesting, I will add some information on these during this build 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giorgio N Posted August 20, 2018 Author Share Posted August 20, 2018 Time for a long overdue update on the two Vampires, continuing with the Italian one. Back to the story: once the Vampire was selected, it was decided to buy the first lot directly from DH while in the meantime preparing all the agreements and the tooling for the production under licence in Italy. The companies tasked with the production are 3, Fiat, Macchi and Alfa Romeo, with SAI following at a later date. Total orders were for the following: 16 FB.5 to be produced by De Havilland 4 NF.10 to be produced by De Havilland 100 FB.52 to be built by the Italian consortium. Of the latter, the workload was split as follows: Fiat to build all 100 sets of wings, booms and tailplanes and to assemble 66 aircraft Macchi to build all 100 fuselages and assemble 34 aircraft Production of the Goblin engine was done by Fiat with Alfa as main subcontractor. And now some figures that may be of interest.... The first 5 DH built FB.5s were paid £ 26,918. The following 11 DH built FB.5s were priced slightly lower at £ 26,093 as the Hispano guns in these were not included in the price. The 4 NF.10s were paid £ 28,873, price that did not include guns nor radar. In addition 6 complete Goblin engines were bought with spares for the price of £ 6,485 each. Total cost of the licence was £ 75,000 plus a minumum of 45,000 to cover 100 aircraft (£450 each for a guaranteed 100). Each further aircraft would have resulted in £ 400 to DH for those between 101 and 200 while any aircraft above 200 would have costed £ 300. The license for the Goblin engine costed £ 100,000 plus £ 50,000 for a guaranteed minimum of 100 engines (£ 500 each). The fee for any engine beyond the 100th was of £ 225. It is interesting to note how the license fees for the engines were higher than those for the aircraft, to recognise how the innovation really was in the former. The first 5 DH built Vampires land at Amendola, Southern Italy, on March 19th 1950 after a flight from Hatfield with a stop at Malpensa (today's one of Milano's airports). That day the Italian Air Force enters the jet age Construction of most aircraft kits start from the cockpit and this is no exception. The parts offered by Special Hobby are nice but really the detail is relatively basic, with only a few parts. Not a big deal for a quick OOB build as the cockpit of the Vampire was black with black details... Tamiya NATO Black works well for this. The only spots of colour are the instruments on the panel and a couple switches here and there.. The exhaust area was also painted in a dark metallic colour and so was the turbine last stage. I also painted the compressor but forgot to take a picture of this. The instrument panel is supplied by SH with recessed circles and a decal. The decal is IMHO not particularly realistic, with the white printed areas too big. I still used the decal but then used a small brush to reduce the white areas with black paint. The final result is not great but better than what SH offers. With the paint in the cockpit curing I assembled the wing halves and the booms... here I forgot to add the booms to the picture but they are ready. Fit of these parts was quite good but I made a mistake in one of the wings... I ran out of Revell glue after gluing the first wing and grabbed a tube of Humbrol cement. This was a bit too aggressive on the plastic and I lost some detail. I'll have to do something to restore the wing to the original configuration 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Masters Posted August 21, 2018 Share Posted August 21, 2018 I'm looking forward to this one Giorgio. I have been eyeing my Swiss Vampire tonight... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exdraken Posted August 22, 2018 Share Posted August 22, 2018 Nice start! But even better read!! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giorgio N Posted August 27, 2018 Author Share Posted August 27, 2018 Thanks folks ! Here's another small chapter on the Italian Vampires and a small but important update on the model I said earlier that the first DH built Vampire was delivered in March 1950 but this was not the first Italian Vampire... On September 29th 1949 a section of 5 Vampire F.3 from 73 Sqn. RAF was in flight from Ta-Kali to Milan to take part in an airshow. Due to bad visibility the aircrafts got lost and when they ran out of fuel all pilots tried to belly land their mounts in the countryside around Brescia, something that they did with no human loss but with various damage to all aircraft. Two were considered unrepairable while the other three are moved to Orio (an airport well known today to all Ryan Air flying tourists...). The least damaged was repaired but after attempting takeoff crash landed again. At that point the RAF decided to write-off all 5 Vampires and told the Italians to keep them. All 5 were moved to Bresso (today a small airport for light aviation types) where they were put in the hands of a few skilled technicians. These had previously served with the Cobelligerant Air Force in 1944/45 and were quite experienced at the art of cannibalisation so they managed to put together 3 complete and serviceable aircraft out of the 5 wrecks. These 3 later entered service together with the first DH delivered Vampires. The update on the model may be small but it's important: the fuselage is closed ! Fit wasn't bad but wasn't perfect either, don't know if it's my fault or what. In any case sorting the offending areas shouldn't be too hard. With the fiselage complete I started adding weight to avoid tailsitting. This is what I found to be necessary, and there are another couple of lead balls deeper in the front fuselage... I have now added another just to be safe... 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giorgio N Posted September 5, 2018 Author Share Posted September 5, 2018 New update today ! Initially the Vampires, particularly those received from DH, were issued to the "Nucleo Addestramento Volo a Reazione" (roughly translatable as jet flight training cadre), known as NAVAR and based at Amendola, Southern Italy. This airport had formerly been the base of the Balkan Air Force and is still used today with the first F-35s of the 32nd Stormo having been declared operational a few months ago. Pilots selected for the NAVAR were a mix comprising the most promising boys straight out of flying school and a number of experienced pilots who had served in WW2. It is interesting to read what the latter in particular wrote and all agreed that the Vampire was a great aircraft to fly. The lack of acceleration compared to piston engined fighter was immediately noticed but the lack of engine torque was considered very positively. The low wing load made for some very good manouvering qualities, particularly at altitude. Most importantly, all agreed on the word "easy" to define the flying qualities of the Vampire. This was very important as made for a smooth transition of pilots into the jet age. And it's not surprising that many other air forces agreed on the Vampire being an ideal first jet. Let's see some plastic... the twin-boom configuration often poses problem to modellers as getting all parts aligned is not easy. The Airfix Vampire offers what is probably the best solution but Special Hobby chose a more common approach, with part of the booms moulded into the wings and the rear end sliding into these. In fairness to SH they give a generous plug that should help alignment, however in my kit this plug resulted in the booms not touching the wing properly. As a result I had to sand the plugs a bit so losing this advantage. In the end I went for the good old technique of gluing one boom in place and then gluing the other and the tailplanes trying to keep everything aligned. I'm pretty happy with the final result, there's a small gap at the junction between the taiplanes and one of the booms but nothing major. You may notice how the intakes are not glued yet. The reason is that I'm still thinking of what to do with them. The SH parts are not good, I may replace them, I may not... more in the next post ! 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Masters Posted September 5, 2018 Share Posted September 5, 2018 Nice looking Vampires Giorgio. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giorgio N Posted September 11, 2018 Author Share Posted September 11, 2018 Thanks John ! Small update, focused more on history than modelling... The first Italian built Vampire took the air from Macchi's new Venegono airfield on Dec. 18th 1951. This was followed a few days later by the first assembled by Fiat. These first Vampires were used for a number of tests and later entered service. The first one was accepted into military service in May 1952 and from then on the two factories delivered Vampires at a rate of roughly one aircraft per month. The output was considered not sufficient and to speed the entry into service of the type a nother two batches were ordered directly from De Havilland, 25 in October 1950 and 15 in April 1952. The April 52 order is interesting as also included 10 NF.54 night fighters. A few months later Italy ordered 2 Venom FB and acquired the licence for both the Vampire night fighter and the Venom. At that point DH and the Italian Air Force were moving together closely and had a plan that would have led Italy to be a major user of DH combat types and DH to become the most important supplier of fighters to NATO. While these plans were developed however a war was being fought thousand miles away in the Korean peninsula... I've now hit a problem, a problem that I was expecting. The intakes in the Special Hobby kit are not good in shape. The same SH later included revised parts in their following Vampire boxes however the Azur box still include the original intakes. How wrong are they ? Here below is a comparison between the Airfix T.11 intake (top) and the Azur/SH FB.5 one (bottom) Quite a difference ! I could live with the fact that overall te SH part has less area, however the difference between the rounded corner of the Airfix intake and the straight one of the SH part is what annoys me. I use the Airfix intakes as comparison because these are accurate. I now have two options: - clone the Airfix intakes in resin and adapt these to the SH model. It can be done, there are some differences due to the way the designers of the two kits have moulded the intakes but simply sanding away resin from the Airfix clones would result in a pair of decently fitting parts - pretend I didn't know and just use the SH parts. I also considered modifying the SH parts to at least obtain a more rounded corner but this is IMHO not that easy. Another option would be to buy the recent Special Hobby Vampire F.3 box and clone the improved parts in resin... Regarding the latter option, in a couple of weeks Milan will host a large modelling show where a couple of shops always have a number of SH kits for reduced prices. I may wait that and see if they have the F.3. Or I may just buy an F.3 off the web or in the local shop. Now the thing is, do I want to spend the £20 that such a kit is going to cost me delivered ? Or do I prefer to wait 2 weeks to maybe find a cheaper kit ? Or do I want to sand resin off an Airfix clone ? Or can I live with the intakes as they are ? All options have pros and cons, the Airfix intakes are IMHO better than even the reworked SH ones, on the other hand will require some fettling. I'd like to get the kit done as soon as possible so that I can progress with the Irish twin seater, yet not sure if I like the SH parts... decisions, decisions.... 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Col. Posted September 14, 2018 Share Posted September 14, 2018 Been catching up with your progress and history lesson again Giorgio Really enjoying both. I'd say clone the Airfix intakes and get them fitted to suit - cheaper and a lot less frustrating in the long term for you. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exdraken Posted September 15, 2018 Share Posted September 15, 2018 Nice read again! Maybe you could ask SH for a pair of reworked intakes? So no need to clone! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giorgio N Posted September 24, 2018 Author Share Posted September 24, 2018 On 9/14/2018 at 8:18 AM, Col. said: Been catching up with your progress and history lesson again Giorgio Really enjoying both. I'd say clone the Airfix intakes and get them fitted to suit - cheaper and a lot less frustrating in the long term for you. Probably is the best option, would also allow me to replace the intakes on any future SH Vampire I may build On 9/15/2018 at 10:31 PM, exdraken said: Nice read again! Maybe you could ask SH for a pair of reworked intakes? So no need to clone! Good idea, hadn't thought of that... Since I've yet to sort the intakes, I've decided to move a few years forward and to the North West... The history of Irish Vampires is much simpler, although of course the relations between Ireland and the UK were not simple in those years.... Ireland had remained neutral in WW2 but really, while some in the Country would have liked to side with Germany, the Irish government adopted policies that were favourable to Britain and the Allies. It was therefore with some surprise that when after the war Ireland started discussions to receive a number of new fighters, they were told by Britain that they could only get some refurbished Seafires... Ireland's original request was for Mk.IXs, the British authorities replied that no Mk.IX was available, the Irish accepted this but then noticed how the IXs were being sold to pretty much everyone else... in the end the Seafires were accepted and were later integrated by a number of two-seaters based on the IX. It was clear that Ireland was only looking at Britain for the needs of their defence as no other Country was contacted. It was therefore not a surprise that in early 1956 an order was issued for the first jet aircraft of the Irish Air Corps in the form of 3 Vampire T.55. The first arrived at the IAC new base in Baldonnel (just outside Dublin) on May 15th of that same year, followed by the remaining two in July. It is interesting to mention that in that same 1956 the first Italian Vampires started being replaced in service by the new generation of jet fghters, the F-86 Sabre. I totally forgot to take pictures of the sprues in the Airfix kit, I know this is a well known kit and most here will have one or more in the stash, still I should have taken those pictures ! So let's start with the cockpit... The Airfix cockpit is IMHO pretty nice, sure companies like Eduard offer more in their kits but I can't complain here. Apart from the instrument panel ! A panel with raised detail would have much better, the decal is not bad but really having both options would have made me much happier. More so as the flat panel contrasts with the decently detailed sidewalls. Not much to say when it comes to colour, everything is black The only touches of colour are the cushions of the seats and the leather base of the control columns. Some more spots can however be added on the sidewalls... Ok, the few small red bits are hard to see, so let's add more colour ! I've seen mentioned very often that Vampire T.11s ejection seats had blue harnesses and there are pictures around showing this detail. I don't know if the IAC T.55s used the same colour, still as these variants are identical I decided to paint my belts in blue. Belts that were made from my usual wine bottle foil... I didn't gor for a bright blue, these are seat harnesses in the end and a greyish blue is IMHO more realistic. Still at least they will add interest to the cockpit area 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Masters Posted September 24, 2018 Share Posted September 24, 2018 20 minutes ago, Giorgio N said: I know this is a well known kit and most here will have one or more in the stash, still I should have taken those pictures! You've been given a reprieve! Some good information for me with future builds. I didn't know the cockpit colour was mostly black. Nice looking work all around. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giorgio N Posted September 25, 2018 Author Share Posted September 25, 2018 Thans John ! Most British fighter cockpits were in black between late WW2 and late '50s. Here I used Tamiya NATO black, maybe I should have chosen a lighter colour. Too late now anyway... The Irish Vampire suddenly progressed a lot in a single day as yesterday I found myself gluing bits one after the other... all went smooth like the career of the type in Irish service. When the first 3 Vampires entered service they were the first jets in Ireland and this meant entering a new era, not only because of their propulsion system... Baldonnel's runway had been first surfaced in concrete only a couple years earlier and after the arrival of the Vampire the IAC realised that they now needed modern traffic control and communication systems. White these systems were installed and tested, the original Vampires were joined by another 3, ordered in 1960 and delivered between January and March 1961. With these the IAC reached their full strength, meaning 6 combat capable jets. A 7th aircraft arrived in 1963, ex RAF XV977 delivered as instructional airframe. I was guilty of not taking sprue shots and I've been ever worse yesterday, as I started gluing bits without realising that I had to take pictures in between... this is also merit of Airfix design team that made this kit very easy to build ! So in only a matter of a couple hours I had the fuselage halves joined, followed by the upper wing and the tail booms Fit was good enough, not stellar but acceptable. The way Airfix designed the boom attachment points is great, these fit very well and are very easy to align. All other companies should take notice whenever producing a kit of a twin boom type. The lower wing parts will follow together with the intakes. Intakes that at the moment are buried under silicone rubber to make a mould.. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Masters Posted September 25, 2018 Share Posted September 25, 2018 8 hours ago, Giorgio N said: I started gluing bits without realising that I had to take pictures in between... I would never get anything built if I had to do that. I have to stop with the OCD at some point otherwise I would turn into a serial starter. Your idea of moulding new intakes seems very ambitious to me. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giorgio N Posted September 26, 2018 Author Share Posted September 26, 2018 You may have nailed my problem John, I am indeed a serial starter in a sense... I have so many started kits that I've lost count.. 😁 This time though I want to finish something ! And here's some more progress on the Irish twin-seater... not much to add to the history, as these "fighters" led a quiet life, apart from an episode that I'll tell in a later post, when one Vampire was almost lost. In the meantime, the intakes are glued in place I have yet to glue the panel with the guns and the front wheel well in place, this as I first want to check if there's enough weight in the front to avoid a tailsitter. A first test showed that I should be safe with what I used (that was quite a lot...), I may drop another couple of fishing weights in place just to be on the safe side Fit as can be seen was quite good but there are a couple of spots where filler will be required 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Masters Posted September 26, 2018 Share Posted September 26, 2018 Looks very nice, especially the intakes. Glad you didn't get hung up on those! I'm looking forward to seeing a Vampire from the Old Country...🍀 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Col. Posted September 26, 2018 Share Posted September 26, 2018 More great progress and history Giorgio 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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