Valiant Wings Supermarine Spitfire Volume 1 – Airframe & Miniature 12

[Mike]

Supermarine Spitfire Volume 1 – Airframe & Miniature 12

ISBN 978-0-9957773-5-4

Valiant Wings Publishing

 

 

There can't be many people that don't know what a Spitfire is, and even fewer that partake in our hobby in any way shape or form, so let's just say that the Spitfire played a major part in the defence of the British Isles during the Battle of Britain and beyond, receiving more and better upgrades to performance and capability throughout the war, with a service life that lasted well beyond May 1945.  It's a testament to the simple brilliance of the original airframe that allowed the later designers to extract more and more performance from this superb aircraft, which was essentially a point defence fighter that would climb up to meet the enemy guided by radar, engage and shoot down as many as possible, concentrating on the accompanying fighters to leave the slightly slower Hurricanes to concentrate on the bomber formation where they robustness and stability could be best used.  Later in the war with the addition of external fuel tanks its range was improved, the Merlin was replaced by the more powerful Griffon engine, and the fuselage spine was trimmed down to give the pilot a better all-round view and improve situational awareness.  Spitfires were even fitted with floats on rare occasions, adapted to Seafires to operate from aircraft carriers, and fitted with filters for desert flight.

 

 

The book is perfect-bound with 240 pages on glossy paper, tons of photographs, diagrams and profiles, the modern pictures being in colour, while the contemporary content is black and white due to that being the predominant film format of the day.  It is of course written by Richard A Franks, with profiles by Richard J Caruana, and models by a group of fine modellers.  With this being volume 1 it deals with the earlier Merlin engine variants, from the prototype up to the XVI, with everything in between, including the Seafires that used Merlin engines, oddities and of course the Photo-Reconnaissance variants that were modified to provide the Allies with detailed pictorial evidence of enemy movements.  If you're familiar with the Airframe & Miniature series, you'll know that the pages are broken down into the Airframe section that deals with the 1:1 real thing, and the miniature section that covers the scale models and has a number of builds, plus a host of photographic detail that will be of great help to the modeller.  The breakdown in more detail is as follows:

 

Airframe Chapters

1. Evolution - Mk.I to V

2. Evolution - Mk.VI to IX/XVI

3. Evolution - Photo-Reconnaissance

4. Evolution - Seafire

5. Camouflage & Markings and Colour Profiles

 

Miniature Chapters

6. Spitfire (Merlin-powered) Kits

7. Building a Selection

8. Building a Collection

9. In Detail: The Supermarine Spitfire & Seafire

Engine, Propeller, Cowls

Oil, Fuel, Coolant, Oxygen, Hydraulic

Cockpit & Canopy

Radio

Mid & Aft Fuselage

Tail

Wings

Undercarriage

Armament, Ordnance & Drop Tanks

Camera

Access Panels

Miscellaneous

 

Appendices

I. Kit List

II. Accessories and Mask List

III. Decal List

IV. Bibliography

 

1:48 Scale plans fold-out (equivalent to 8 pages)

 

 

The scale plans are nicely thought out, and fold out sideways with the left-hand edge captive to the inside cover, and the isometric drawings by Wojciech Sankowski that pick out the differences between variants and sub-variants are a boon for anyone like me that struggles to remember the details that separate the marks.  As usual with the photographs in these titles, they're excellent for the most part, and as good as they can be for the occasional slightly grainy one that is all that remains of this or that variant.  There's only so much that modern photo editing software can do, afterall.  The builds by Libor Jekl, Steve A. Evans and Dani Zamarbide are all first-rate too, with two in 1:72, and one each in 1:48 and 1:32, all of which wouldn't look out of place on competition tables at the highest level.

 

 

 

If you visit Valiant's website using the button below, don't forget to have a look at the free downloadable 48 pages of content that they have prepared for you, as it will give you a good idea of the quality of the rest of the book.  It includes additional text and photos, plus a huge expansion on the available kits and accessories, so that it didn't take up too many paper pages of the book, squeezing out the more interesting stuff.  Scrolling through those last pages (and don't forget there are some more pictures after that), makes one realise just how popular a subject the Spit is with us modellers.

 

 

Now we look forward to Volume 2.

 

 

Review sample courtesy of

 

[NPL]

looks great -- ordered it immediately

[NPL]

OK, got it.  And it is quite splendid. A few odd decisions such as only listing available kits, omitting quite recent ones, like Airfix new Mk.I, which will probably be reedited before long. It is -- pace Tamiya -- too good to be forgotten after only a couple of year after its first appearance. 

 

The list of decals and accessories is severely incomplete but for good reasons: Getting to Valiant Wings Publications home page, you can download a far more complete list for free plus additional material. Only problem, both list will soon be obsolete as new material continues to appear. If it should remain 'operative' it has to be revised regularly, at least once a year.

 

Such considerations shows a problem: The publisher thinks within a limited time horizon. But the book could remain as an important source if especially the list are updated regularly. 

 

 

 

[Dave Fleming]

How different is it to the old SAMI Modeller’s Datafile?

[NPL]

I found the old SAMI Datafile(s) awful. Bad models and again a list of varia of no yuse at all. Can't remember if it was also Carouana who made the plans.

[NPL]

One thing I forgot. This new book has a lot of information about PR Spitfires, especially the early ones. I would almost say that it is worth the price of the book.

 

And: If anyone is interested in my list of decals for Spitfires in 1/48 (guess that it is about 98% complete). Please notify me via my email. It is about 115 A-4 pages. 

[Olmec Head]

Having just got the book through the post, there are some issues that I have seen after a quick read through.  One immediate one was that the Mk VIII ' reverted to original length ailerons'  according to the book which is clearly not right.  Further there is no mention of the wing fuel tanks installed in the VIII's - again a significant error.

 

 

 

 

[Sydhuey]

Just got the book and while not bad expected better, I have a few Airframe and Miniatures books and a couple of Airframe Albums and while generally very good found more errors than I expected in this book, first thing that jumped out at me was the narrative for the cover artwork, RAAF Spitfire Vc over Darwin , unfortunately the text said the action took place over Shoal Bay NSW, not Shoal Bay Darwin NT, Shoal Bay is Newcastle NSW 4000km away , the Information and Schemes/marking for RAAF Spitfires was average to say the least, and tech data on Mk VIII's was wrong as noted above, if you want good info on Australian Spitfires get the books by Peter Malone on Aussie Spitfires by Eduard.

Good book but too many mistakes in it in this day and age with access to information, for this to be a "Bible" needed to really have the information spot on , particularly on the Spitfire of all aircraft. 

[Bill1974]

On 04/10/2018 at 17:28, Mike said:

don't forget to have a look at the free downloadable 48 pages of content that they have prepared for you,

Hiya, 

 

I could not find the download, am I blind?

 

Thanks

 

Matt