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Vickers Wellesley Port Sudan East Africa summer 1940.


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        Good morning everyone... Id like to present my Matchbox 1/72 Vickers Wellesley. It represents an aircraft from 14 Squadron Port Sudan in Summer 1940. The only modification done to the kit is to pose the side windows open and mount a gun in the starboard position as similar to this photo. U9xw1IL.jpg
I understand there is some debate to the colors of these Wellesley’s but I think the contrast lends itself to being Dark earth/Light Stone or Sand. So in the end I opted to go with those colors. negJk7W.jpg
 

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To give you a visual comparison of the size here it is to a contemporary aircraft, the Heinkel He.112B a Heller 1/72 kit. 
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I say contemporary as they both first flew in 1935. Please feel free to ask questions, post comments, or add thoughts. 
 

Dennis

Edited by Corsairfoxfouruncle
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Thats a blast from the past, i remember it when it first came on sale at my local newsagents .

I remember the temptation was to great and purchased it even though i went in to buy a totaly different model kit .

I must say your model is light years ahead of mine back in the day ,a very nice piece of work sir 👍

 

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It was a long range single-engined bomber, something less odd when it was designed than it would seem soon afterwards.  However the specification it was designed to was for a General Purpose machine, mainly intended for colonial use.  Once it appeared it was used to equip new bomber squadrons (or indeed older ones) in the UK as part of the RAF expansion in the late 1930s, but a small number were used in the Middle East.  Its main wartime role was as a long range bomber operating out of Aden and attacking Italian East Africa.  The aircraft in the UK were withdrawn before the outbreak of war and either sent directly to the overseas units or overhauled to a long-canopy standard (known perhaps unofficially as the Mk.II) but many of these were lost to U-boat attacks on British shipping.

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Very nicely done. I had one of those too back in about 1980. Built it in the European colours. Matchbox definitely had some esoteric subjects. But it was significant as it was the first of Barnes Wallis' geodetic aeroplanes. 

 

Nice to see it again. 

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It is nice to see how beautiful this old Matchbox kits can be finished when they are done with care, attention to detail and some modifications. You prefectly resurrected one of the forgotten RAF Bombers of WW2! 👍

Edited by 112 Squadron
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5 hours ago, Pete in a shed said:

The wing area is something else! must have been a precursor to the U2😀, or was it really that inefficient in producing lift?

 

Highly efficient, in fact! The Wellesley still holds the record for the greatest distance flown by a single-piston-engined aircraft, from when it set a (then) world long distance record of over 7100 miles, from Ismailia, Egypt to Darwin, Australia in 1938.

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