Eduard Spitfire Mk IIb, does it have all the parts to make a Vb?

[Aidrian]

6 hours ago, DominikS said:

Just a quick question about the underwing bulges in cannon armed Spitfires Mk.I and II. Were they the same?

Oh, a nice easy one to start off with... wow, gee, thanks a lot...

 

Preserved aircraft don't always represent the state of the machine when it took its first test flight, so the fitting on the Canadian Spitfire may not be original to that aircraft. Wings were changed if they had been damaged; one relatively recent Mk.IX(?) restoration caused some head scratching as a rather mismatched pair had been fitted at some stage 

 

At the moment we don't know when or where things changed and since photos of the underside of Mk.IIbs in service are a bit hard to find,  it might need a long trawl though documents at the PRO and other places to sort it out.  Mk.IIb and Vb production at CBAF overlapped a litle bit during late June and early July 1941 and some details might have carried over from one to the other - parts that had already been made and which didn't have a fault and/or weren't safety critical would normally be used up before changing to the newer design to avoid slowing production.  The later asymmetrical fairing designed by Supermarine might be different to the version initially used at CBAF, but I don't know one way or t'other.  The best way to find these things out is usually to make a categorical statement and then sit back and wait for someone who knows a lot more than I do to throw bricks at me and my arguments.

 

Check the late Edgar Brooks' post from 2013 for details of two versions but not the teardrop version used on R6923 or the Eduard IIb kit- the images are still up the time of writing this