RAAF Vengeance

[Enzo the Magnificent]

My second entry in this GB is an RAAF Vengeance from the Special Hobby kit.

 

 

As with all my entries in this GB, they have been in progress since the start, so although it may seem to progress quickly... well...   it hasn't.  

 

The kit is typical of the offerings from Special hobby from a few years ago.  There are no locating pins on the fuselage halves or tabs on the wings and tailplanes.  The cockpit parts, engine and undercarriage housings are provided in resin.  The canopy is vacform, which is scaring me a little.  Thankfully there are two of them    There is also some PE.

 

 

 

 

I won't be building this as a target tug.  I want the winch parts to go on a Beaufighter...

[Enzo the Magnificent]

The cockpit assembly makes a nice tub which provides a bit of structural rigidity.

 

 

I have drilled some holes in the wing roots to provide for a couple of spars for the wings.  Well that was the plan.

 

In the event I only used one.

 

 

The interior of the wing leading edges were filled with Milliput to allow the spars something to fit against.

 

 

and surprisingly enough, it all worked!  even more surprisingly, it's quite a rigid assembly.

 

 

I love the weird wing planform with the forward swept outer panels. 

[Rabbit Leader]

Got my eyes on both this kit and your build Enzo. Having recently purchased a Frog Vengeance, then compared it to various references and chatted with others, it would appear (rightly) that this is the better Vengeance kit of the two. She certainly looks the part, just need to click the ‘buy’ button and open the wallet again. 

 

Cheers.. Dave 

[the South African]

Another not often seen bird. Smartly built and good improv fir the short commings. 

 

Regards:

Shaun 

[Graeme H]

Great work there Enzo

and seeing this, reminds me I have one of these on the shelf of doom, note to self, must locate, must locate

I remember that I didn't put the interior in, as it will slide all the way up the fuselage before the engine is fitted, another note to self, must remember to do that before fitting engine.

[Enzo the Magnificent]

19 hours ago, Graeme H said:

and seeing this, reminds me I have one of these on the shelf of doom, note to self, must locate, must locate

You could always finish it off in the KUTA GB which is running at the moment.

 

 

[Enzo the Magnificent]

Carrying on with the build, the next step was to add the cowling.  This is built from three plastic parts, sides and front, as well as a very nicely moulded resin engine.  There are no locating pins for the cowling, so the modeller has to locate it carefully.

 

The tailplanes are simply butt jointed to the fuselage.  I've never had any luck with that sort of arrangement so I drilled some very narrow holes in both sets of components and used some dressmakers pins as locating spars.

 

 

The undercarriage housings are resin parts.

 

 

after that there was a lot of cleaning up and then a quick spray of grey plastic primer from a rattle can.

 

Then comes the fun bit.  This aircraft has a white tail and wing leading edges.   I have never had much luck spraying acrylic white before as it is always too translucent.  So rather than do that, I've been using gloss white from a rattle can with mixed results.  Somtimes I overspray slightly and get a run or it fills in detail.  Sometimes it just gets a speckly texture. 

 

Well, those days are gone.  I found Lifecolor UA-718 Cold Light Shade.  It is intended for painting wood textures and is a slightly off white.  The good news is it has good covering power. A bonus is that being an off white, it doesn't produce that stark appearance that gloss white paint does.

 

Here we see the white areas sprayed and masked.

 

 

The uppersurfaces were then sprayed with Lifecolor UA-513 RAAF Earth Brown.  after the paint had dried and hardened I reinforced the surface with a couple of thin coats of matt lacquer from a rattle can.  Then the camouflage pattern was masked using my favourite technique of Blutak worms, masking tape and Copydex.

 

 

[Enzo the Magnificent]

The next stage was to totally forget to take any pictures...   

 

The camouflage pattern was sprayed with Lifecolor UA-514 RAAF Foliage Green.  Undersurfaces were masked and sprayed Lifecolor UA-124 Japanese Grey Green A5, which is a better match for the undersurface colour than UA-515 RAAF Sky Blue, which seems far too pale.

 

After a couple of coats of gloass laquer, the decals were applied.  These came from Print Scale sheet 72157

 

 

And we're up to date.

[trickyrich]

gosh no messing about with you Enzo, one minutes it's just a box of bit's next it's nearly complete........either that or like me you keep forgetting to update the thread! 

 

Plus lucky I checked the main thread else this build would have been in the gallery before I found it.

 

So welcome aboard and wow lovely work, she looks awesome, you've done a great job on her. I'm interested to see the underside as I will be using the Life Color RAAF Sky Blue on my P-39. I know it's quite a pale blue so am interested in the colour you used.

 

Well good luck with completing her and we'll see another build shortly? 

[Enzo the Magnificent]

20 hours ago, trickyrich said:

gosh no messing about with you Enzo, one minutes it's just a box of bit's next it's nearly complete........either that or like me you keep forgetting to update the thread!

er... yeh.   It's the latter.      

[MikeR]

Looking good!

 

Mike.

[modelling minion]

Another great choice Enzo, there is something about the Vengeance and it's odd shaped wings that makes it an attractive design, to me at least anyway.

Blink and you've missed the build though!

[Ventora3300]

Enzo, lovely paint job on the Vengance. I was trying to find out where the white tail and leading edge identifications came from - was this standard for all RAAF aircraft or only those in a particular theatre of operations? Thanks. Mike.

[Rabbit Leader]

@Ventora3300 - Mike, the white tail and leading edges were adopted by a large number of single engined RAAF aircraft operating within the New Guinea & SWP theatres. There are also many examples of US operated aircraft that painted the tails all white as well. They were very common on RAAF Kittyhawks, Spitfires and Vengeance’s from around 1943 onwards. Someone on here may dig out the official orders as I’m just going by what’s in my head! 

 

Enzo - by the way, that’s a cracking build coming along mate, really crisp modelling on show, well done. 

 

Cheers.. Dave 

[Ventora3300]

2 hours ago, Rabbit Leader said:

@Ventora3300 - Mike, the white tail and leading edges were adopted by a large number of single engined RAAF aircraft operating within the New Guinea & SWP theatres. There are also many examples of US operated aircraft that painted the tails all white as well. They were very common on RAAF Kittyhawks, Spitfires and Vengeance’s from around 1943 onwards. Someone on here may dig out the official orders as I’m just going by what’s in my head! 

Enzo and Dave, here's an extract from ww2aircraft.net 'RAAF Markings and Codes' that I found:

 

White Theatre Markings

Trigger-happy pilots and gunners in the air and on the ground in the New Guinea war zone were too often firing first, then checking the identity of their targets. Mistakes were occurring. The USAAF decided upon the application of distinctive white markings to all friendly single-engined fighter aircraft, effective from September 1943. To be painted White were wing leading edges and the whole of the tail assembly. Spinners were frequently painted white also. This measure affected considerable numbers of RAAF and USAAF 5th AF Aircraft (RNZAF P-40s too). In due course, white-tailed aircraft were to be seen in Australia as it was desirable to have aircraft given these markings prior to moving to the New Guinea war zone, and retired aircraft would return with them. Until May 1944, the RAAF also stipulated that the white fins of it’s aircraft should continue to carry the blue portion of the fin stripe. In August 1944 the USAAF decided that the white markings need no longer be applied to uncamouflaged (i.e. bare metal finish) aircraft, and the RAAF followed suit in September. Then this change was overtaken by the decision in December of that year to no longer require the white markings at all. However, it should be understood that abandonment of the white New Guinea theatre marking was not a requirement to remove it, and many aircraft would continue to wear their white paint until the end of hostilities.

 

I think the books to get would be RAAF CAMOUFLAGE and MARKINGS 1935-45 VOLs 1 and 2 by Geoffrey Pentland.

 

All fascinating stuff! All the best, Mike.

[Enzo the Magnificent]

Thanks for the input, Mike and Dave.  Excellent stuff.  

[DaveyGair]

Nice work.

There's one on 'the 'Bay' at the minute, which I fancy building as a Target Tug. Must resist, too much to do 

 

Davey

[Enzo the Magnificent]

21 minutes ago, DaveyGair said:

Must resist

Resistance is futile. 

[Beard]

I've just stumbled across this after seeing the finished article in the Gallery and it's very nice, I must get one for Pacific At War 2 group build.