Wellington Mk II***FINISHED***

[PeterB]

I suppose I first started building Airfix plane kits in around 1957 and before long I had persuaded my parents to buy me a “big” kit for Christmas and my birthday, so in 1958 (I think) my Christmas present was the old Airfix Lancaster and the next year I got their Wellington BIII which was a Series 4 kit costing 6/- (30p). and that was followed by their Sunderland, Halifax, DC3, B-17, B-24 and lastly their Stirling in 1966 – after that I bought my own B-29 etc. By that time I had discovered that some Wellingtons and indeed Halifaxes had Merlin engines and I rather liked that idea, but I had to wait a long time before anybody released one, and here it is.

At the start of WWII the RAF had 3 “modern” twin engined bombers – the Whitley which was originally classed as a “heavy” and the medium Hampden and Wellington. The Wellington aka “Wimpy” was far and away the best of the three and outlasted the other two by a considerable margin, being an important part of the night bomber force until perhaps 1943 and continuing in other roles such as anti submarine warfare, training and transport until the end of the war. In spite of that it was not well represented in plastic until early this century, with just the Airfix, Frog and Matchbox kits. Then both MPM and Trumpeter released a whole slew of them, followed more recently by Airfix. The original MPM release was the early Mk IA/C in I think 2002, but this was re-released in 2006 as a Mk III, 2008 as a Mk II, and later as a Mk IV, and possibly a Mk X. I bought this Mk II about 10 years ago. Airfix released a Mk IA/C “imported” from MPM in 2009, and more recently issued their own, later reboxing it as a GR VIII, and then again as a Mk II, as built by Enzo in the Bomber/Strike etc GB. That seems to be a very good kit though it costs rather more than my MPM kit, but more on that during the build.

 

Here are the sprues.

You may have noticed 4 sets of props and 2 of tailplanes - this is because it seems to include most if not all of the parts for the Mk IA/IC original kit and some of the parts for the Mk III - for example the twin row 14 cylinder Hercules engines. The single bank 9 cylinder Pegasus engines for the Mk I's are also there in the form of a hub and seperate cylinders - glad I am not building that one! The wider chord tailplanes are for the Mk II onwards, and the top left sprue in the last photo is for the Merlin powered Mk II as are the resin radiators in the first shot. There is also a revised glazing for the 4 gun rear turret fitted from the Mk III on.

 

More once the GB actually starts.

 

Pete

Edited February 26, 2022 by PeterB

[Adam Poultney]

Kicking off the group build perfectly with a subject at the very heart of what this is about. A big British bomber. I'm looking forward to seeing this build!

[DaveyGair]

Will watch with interest as I have the Revell boxing of this kit.

 

Davey.

[PeterB]

3 hours ago, DaveyGair said:

Will watch with interest as I have the Revell boxing of this kit.

 

Davey.

Hi Davey.

 

I knew about the Airfix and Italeri reboxing of the old MPM Mk IC, but had not noticed that Revell re-boxed the Mk II. It is of course the same plastic but only decs for 2 aircraft rather than the 4 in mine. The most curious difference is their re-interpretation of the internal colour scheme. The MPM one is based on the 4+ book which they recommend, and that not only has the stock B&W photos of the interior but also colour ones of the inside of the two preserved ones in the UK. Now I know you have to be careful about preservations, and the RAF Museum one was a Mk X trainer so is much later, but the Mk IA recovered from Loch Ness  which is now down at Brooklands, its place of birth,  is I suspect pretty accurate. If so, the aluminium channels that form the structure, together with the longerons seem to have been left unpainted ( or maybe painted a light grey) and the Irish linen that forms the skin was doped a red/brown colour. This was left exposed except in the region of the wireless operator's station and perhaps the cockpit itself, where it was padded with sound proofing material. The Brooklands one shows this to be a sort of creamish white, but at the time I suspect it may have been darker - say grey/green or black. Certainly there is some grey/green in the cockpit itself on the metal parts that are not black. Floors may have been grey/green or just left as natural varnished wood and the same goes for the bulkheads and doors. See link below.

https://flic.kr/p/2n5RXLr

 

Had I not seen this info I would have gone with the usual RAF night bomber interior colours of grey/green everywhere except for a black cockpit, turret interiors and bomb bay, which incidentally, unlike Airfix, MPM have not included. Judging by Enzo's build of the Airfix Mk II over in the "Bomber/Strike/Ground Attack" GB, Airfix have included a lot more internal detail which is perhaps why their kit is rather more expensive. The engineering is, as one might expect from recent Airfix kits, rather better and I am not looking forward to MPM's 3 part turret glazing, but this is not a bad kit - at least they now provide a few locating pins and also tabs for the wing and tail which in early MPM/Special Hobby kits were just butt fits! Pity they did not mould the cut out for the triangular waist gun window that all bar the early ones of the 200 Mk II produced had - they do show where to cut it out and provide the glazing, but it may be a little fiddly.

 

Are you thinking of entering your Revell boxing in this GB?

 

Pete

 

[DaveyGair]

6 hours ago, PeterB said:

Hi Davey.

 

Are you thinking of entering your Revell boxing in this GB?

 

Pete

 

 

Hi Pete, no, I'm trying to get some aircraft building mojo back over on the bomber/ground attack GB with an Academy RAF Ventura, which has stalled.

I was going to do an Airfix new tool Lancaster with an Alleycat Tallboy conversion complete with a Belcher Bits bomb trolley to display the bomb, but we'll see how it goes.

As always there's lots of opinions on interior colours, I did a Greece based early Airfix Wellington doing the interior as per the instructions but I could imagine as time went on they may have been overpainted black but I don't know how anyone could know for sure.

 

Davey.

[PeterB]

The Vickers Armstrong Wellesley, Wellington and Warwick were designed by Barnes Wallis who been involved in the building of the airship R100 at Vickers which introduced him to a slightly different method of construction known as Geodetic or sometimes Geodesic which makes use of a “space frame” formed from a spirally crossing basket-weave of load-bearing members. The principle is that two geodesic arcs can be drawn to intersect on a curving surface (the fuselage, wing etc) in a manner that the torsional load on each cancels out that on the other – or so Wiki says! In the Wellington the frame was constructed of light Duraluminium “channel” strips to which wooden battens were fixed to support the doped Irish linen covering. There were also Dural longerons.It was light, very strong and proved highly resistant to damage – bent or broken frames could usually be just cut out and replaced and then re-covered with more fabric. There was one inherent problem – any openings such as canopies, turrets and particularly bomb bays messed up the geodesics and so a weight bearing frame had to be fitted to bridge the gap and spread the stresses out back into the frame. That was almost certainly why the Wellesley had panniers under the wings for the bombs rather than a bomb bay, unlike the Wellington.

 

MPM have moulded the geodetic structure quite well in the fuselage ( except for the ejector pin marks).

I am am not sure if I will attempt to pick out the aluminium struts as they will hardly be visible - maybe just in the cockpit. As to the wings they have been a bit more subtle than some examples I have seen over the years.

But it is still perhaps a little overdone. I know that sources mention the canvas settling between the ribs during flight due to air pressure, but on the ground I am not so sure - maybe the fabric stretched over time and sagged a bit? Might not look too bad under a few layers of paint.

 

Incidentally, I mentioned the Warwick earlier - some early books suggest that the larger Warwick was intended as a replacement for the Wellington, but it was in fact a parallel design with extra frames added to lengthen the fuselage and wings. Like the Manchester and original Halifax designs it was intended to be powered by two of the new generation of more powerful engines such as the R-R Vulture or Napier Sabre but when they failed to live up to expectations or were delayed Vickers struggled to find a suitable replacement powerplant and by the time it finally entered service it was out of date and too slow so was used for Coastal Command and transport duties.

 

Pete

Edited March 2, 2022 by PeterB

[theplasticsurgeon]

Hi Peter,  I'm really glad to see this build,  wishing you the best for it.

The Revell kit is in my stash, and I'm encouraged to start it, in this GB - after completing my Hasegawa Corsair II.

 

[PeterB]

Hi Tim,

 

Yes, you will be able to see what not to do as I fumble my way through the build!

 

Pete

[PeterB]

I am itching to get this started, but to kill time I though I would get in a bit of background.

 

Air Ministry spec 9/32 for a medium day bomber produced both the Wellington and the Hampden, though in the case of the Wellington the rather protracted development was influenced by several other specs such as 3/34 which produced the Whitley “heavy” night bomber, latter re-classified medium, and 1/35 which was for a twin engined heavy powered by two of the expected new and more powerful engines such as the Vulture, Sabre and Centaurus, which lead to the Vickers Type 284 Warwick and the Avro Manchester. The initial Type 271 prototype named the Crecy first flew in 1936, having a single manually operated Browning mg in nose and tail revolving “cupolas” with provision for a further gun firing through a ventral hatch and maybe one through a hatch on the upper fuselage as well. The horizontal lines you can see through the canvas on the fuselage are the wood stingers I mentioned earlier, or maybe in some cases the metal longerons used to brace the geodetic channels. As you can see the u/c doors at this stage were attached to the wheel legs as in the case of the Blenheim.

 

However the production type 284 had many changes including a redesigned deeper fuselage, modified wing and tail, and Vickers designed gun mountings for 1 Browning in the nose and two in the tail in what were not actually turrets, the guns traversing and elevating in a horizontal slot but operated by a Frazer-Nash power drive. A Vickers designed ventral turret was also intended to be fitted. In fact the type 285 was apparently a smaller version of the Type 284 Warwick with about 80% commonality, but a bit shorter - not the other way round as is often thought. The first of the production Wellington Mk I's flew in December 1937.

This one is in some sort of war games markings I think.

 

So, I will continue the story as it relates to the kit in a few days.

 

Pete

Edited March 2, 2022 by PeterB

[Graham Boak]

The key feature in B,9/32 was the weight restriction, imposed with the expectation on international agreement to limit the size of bombers.  The failure of such talks lead to the relaxation on this weight limit and hence the redesign of the Vickers offerings.  It has always struck me that the Hampden was closer to the original requirements, which is perhaps why the AM saw fit to retain both types.

[PeterB]

45 minutes ago, Graham Boak said:

The key feature in B,9/32 was the weight restriction, imposed with the expectation on international agreement to limit the size of bombers.  The failure of such talks lead to the relaxation on this weight limit and hence the redesign of the Vickers offerings.  It has always struck me that the Hampden was closer to the original requirements, which is perhaps why the AM saw fit to retain both types.

Hi Graham,

 

Yes, that is a fair point. The to me rather naive attempt to restrict the size of bombers did influence the original design,  which was why the fuselage was later made deeper to get a bigger bomb bay and the weight eventually more than doubled by the time the production version flew. I guess the idea was lighter bombers would carry less bombs/fuel and so either have less hitting power or a shorter range, so perhaps there was a point, but was there a limit on the number they could build - if not they could substitute fuel for part of the payload to get the range back and build more planes to get back the weight of bombs on target (or at least somewhere within 10 miles of it given the state of the art at the time)😁

 

I guess the relaxation of this weight limit was the motivation for the issue of B.3/34 for a "heavy bomber"?

 

Pete

[Graham Boak]

In the context of post-WW1, there were quite a lot of people who thought that war was a bad thing (how silly), and whatever could be done to diminish the possible damage was therefore a good thing.  It was also thought that increasing the size of bombers would only encourage people to indiscriminately bomb cities, leading to civilian deaths on a large scale (as if...).  The principle of lots of small bombers swapping payload for range will only take anyone so far: small aircraft cannot carry lots of either bombs or fuel.  And of course the planned target for RAF bombers was Paris: not in any belief that war with France was likely but you have to use some measure.

 

As for the specific genesis of B.3/34, that is quite correct.  I would strongly recommend (of this and a great many other reasons), Colin Sinnott's The RAF and Aircraft Design 1923-1939.

 

You might like to read about the parallel, and in some ways more effective, interwar naval treaties limiting the size of navies and of individual ship classes.

[PeterB]

Thanks Graham,

 

As a builder of model warships I am fairly familiar with the various Washington and London treaties (and the way the allies read the Japanese "mail" so knew in advance before they walked out) but I take your point.

 

Pete

[PeterB]

The starting gun has gone off so here we go.

Over its life the Wellington underwent numerous changes, mainly to the engines, but also to the armament, tailplane and windows. These were introduced progressively on the production lines, which were initial at Vickers works in the centre of the Brooklands racing track near Weybridge where I went for a job interview in 1970. A new factory opened in late 1939 at Broughton near Chester where I lived for a few years, and then in around 1942 another was set up in Blackpool. As a result Mk IC, Mk II and maybe even Mk III were in production at the same time for a short period and changes applied to one often appeared on the others so it can get a bit confusing. Besides the replacement Fraser Nash nose and tail turrets introduced on the Mk IA, provision was made for a F-N ventral or “dustbin” turret but that was soon replaced by beam guns as it caused too much drag. Initially the beam guns were at the rear of the long strip of windows over the wing, but to improve the field of fire a new triangular window was later introduced nearer the tail. This could be seen on late Mk IC and most of the Mk II bar the early ones. Most kept the windows over the wing but some users painted over them and the large rectangular window on the starboard side of the nose, and in some cases they were actually blanked off/had fabric over them. The Mk III only had the triangular window. Airfix provide all the windows together with blanking plates, but MPM only provide the long strip over the wing, with a blanking plate. They do provide the glazing for the triangular window but you have to cut it out yourself which is a bit of a pain. Because of the heavier Merlin engines the Mk II was fitted with wider chord tailplanes as were all subsequent models.

 

When I was at school we had to read several of Shakespeare's plays. I was not a great fan but one phrase that did stick in my mind was uttered by his character Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night - “Not to be abed after Midnight is to be up betimes (early)”. I have always been a bit of a “Night Owl”, more so since I retired, so just after midnight I started drilling and cutting the triangular waist gun windows out and then stuck slivers of clear plastic in to support the windows which are supposed to be added from the outside – otherwise they would almost certainly end up falling into the fuselage and still might! As you can see I have given the interior a base coat of Tamiya XF-75 IJN deck linoleum as the red brown dope I mentioned earlier. I will now start on the interior bits and pieces.

 

More as and when.

 

Pete

[Colin W]

With this and @TonyOD 's Halifax having Merlins then we will need another Radial engine GB next year.

[PeterB]

Ok, I always knew this kit was not going to be easy but in terms of the windows it is worse than I thought. 

Unlike most "normal" kits they do not have a "flange" so I am going to have to be very careful handling it or they will fall out! Not only that but they have only moulded the criss-cross bracing on the triangular waist gun windows - the long windows over the wing just have a few vertical frame lines. Now it could be recent improvements in moulding technique but if you look at Enzo's Wellington on the Bomber/Strike GB Airfix have not only made the cut out for the window but have managed to continue the geodetic channels across it making life an awful lot easier. I am going to either have to hand paint them in freehand or maybe use a marker pen - tedious. As you can see the cockpit has some detail though nowhere as much as the Airfix kits, although they do colour a lot of their internal parts in green and tell you they won't be seen so you can leave them out if you want - never seen that on instructions before!

 

Hopefully the exterior will be a bit easier.

 

Pete

Edited March 5, 2022 by PeterB

[Graham Boak]

MPM were a short-run producer then, so the Wellington was quite an ambitious model for them.  IIRC the early issues even had separate propeller blades for each hub - I may be thinking of their Sally from about the same time, although this was common on East European kits at the time.  It isn't really a fair comparison with one of the recent Airfix tooling, and in some ways not a fair comparison with older Airfix ones either.  It is perhaps a measure of how far the mainstream companies had fallen at that time that MPM felt it worthwhile to attempt something so close to mainstream products, rather than just wonderfully exotic types - or even anything out of the ordinary - that the mainstream companies wouldn't touch.  Nowadays the Special Hobby (part of the MPM "empire") kits show how much the  short-run companies have improved.

[PeterB]

Too true Graham.

 

I have been modelling for around 65 years and things have changed a lot - particularly in the 20 years since this mould went into action for the early MPM Wellington Mk IC. Anyway, I decided to use an acrylic paint pen for the frames.

Far from perfect but it gives an impression. With all those windows it must have been a bit like riding in a railway carriage up front, but of course it was originally intended to be a day bomber. After the switch to night they were pretty usueless and indeed could have been a bit of a hazard  with the navigators light on etc, so you can see why they were mostly removed by the Mk III. The grey green thing at the rear is the tailwheel bay - it was retractable - at least at first though it may have been fixed later.

 

It actually goes together fairly well in spite of only a handful of tiny locating pins.

The locating slot for the horizontal tail looks to be at a fair old angle - wonder how that is going to work out! In spite of what it says in the Airfix instructions, a lot of the interior is visible in this version so maybe I should have scratched a few frames, bulkheads etc. Oh well, not to worry! My Whitley will make up for it I suppose, assuming I build it. Actually I have found pics of one of the planes offered in this kit with the windows in front of the wing leading edged "blanked out" so I might just do that.

 

Pete

Edited March 5, 2022 by PeterB

[Mike N]

Rapid progress, Pete! The prospect of a Whitley is great news

 

Mike

[Adam Poultney]

Great to see this off to a start right at the beginning of the GB. Also excited at the prospect of a Whitley build 

[PeterB]

This kit is a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde - as mentioned previously MPM together with Special Hobby both started off in short run kits which had little or no locating pins, tabs, slots or holes, everything being a butt fit. I said that this was an improvement as it had a few tiny locating pins and the wings had tabs to go into slots in the fuselage, though most of the interior bits and pieces were still butt "guess where they go" fit! What I had not noticed was that the bits added in 2009 for the Mk II seem to have reverted to the "old standard" so whereas the original Mk I horizontal tail has a tab on the upper part to fit in the slot in the fuselage, the replacement wider chord ones do not. Irritating but easy enough to fix so I have cut out a slot and will add tabs from card..

In the pic the original one is at the top and is not as small as perspective makes it look. When the heavier Merlin engines caused handling problems the chord was increased by fitting an extension on the leading edge, but that did not extend to the balance part of the elevator it seems. Having said that, I think MPM have overdone it a bit and the kink should maybe not be that pronounced - plans I have seen show a slight change but it is not that obvious!

 

I encountered another minor annoyance today. I used enamel paints for many years and still do for some basic colours, but about 10 years ago I started to switch to acrylics, My first experience was with Tamiya paint, but when I went into my LMS in Cardiff to get some RAF Dark Earth and Dark Green one of the staff suggested I might be better with Gunze Mr Colour and showed me a pic of a big Lanc he had done. I was impressed, and so since then I have used their "Hobby Colour" H72 and 73 as on this Hampden.

 I will admit that both colours are perhaps a bit lighter than my RAF Museum chips, particularly the brown but they go on well and I like them, or maybe I should say liked as I was running out and have just received some replacements. On reflection I seem to remember this being mentioned on a build thread a year or two ago, but it seems that they have changed the mixture for some reason. The "new" brown is pretty similar, though maybe a little darker which is perhaps no bad thing. However the green is frankly horrible - nearer light olive than dark green and actually lighter than the chip for RAF Light Green! I don't know why they did this but to my mind it was a mistake and if I had a contact address I would have a few words with them. IPMS Stockholm suggest Tamiya XF-61 in their useful "Urban's Colour Charts" but that seems just a little dark to me so I have dug out my old Xtracolour X001 enamel and will use that even though it will slow me down a bit as it takes several hours to dry. If I don't like the result I may switch to the Tamiya green.

 

Thought it was gong too well - isn't it always the way! At least I did not have to use any filler on the fuselage joints but I suspect that will not last.

 

Bye for now,

 

Pete

Edited March 7, 2022 by PeterB

[PeterB]

The main wheel wells have a fair bit if rib detail inside but I have not bothered dry brushing/highlighting as they are not going to be seen much.

One pair were a reasonable fit but the other were distorted and needed heavy clamping. They glue into the lower wing half and then the upper part is added, but, as with some of their old kits, there is insufficient clearance - in fairness they do say that you may have to "grind down" the top front corners of the bay and they were right!

Talk about "square peg into round hole" - the above pic is of course upside down. Ok, it is not much trouble but why did they not mould it the correct shape in the first place - I can't see any of the other versions having a different rear nacelle. When I bought this it was the only Mk II available, but for the extra £10 or so I would certain recommend the Airfix kit - a lot more detail and a lot less work!

 

Next up the Merlin cowlings and then the main construction is almost done. Just the props/exhausts/intakes on the engines which I will leave off until I have finished the filling and sanding I will probably have to do when fitting the cowlings, and then it is just the turrets, wheels and undercarriage and a few bits and pieces.

 

Pete

[theplasticsurgeon]

22 hours ago, PeterB said:

What I had not noticed was that the bits added in 2009 for the Mk II seem to have reverted to the "old standard" so whereas the original Mk I horizontal tail has a tab on the upper part to fit in the slot in the fuselage, the replacement wider chord ones do not. Irritating but easy enough to fix so I have cut out a slot and will add tabs from card..

In the pic the original one is at the top and is not as small as perspective makes it look. When the heavier Merlin engines caused handling problems the chord was increased by fitting an extension on the leading edge, but that did not extend to the balance part of the elevator it seems.

Got to say that I'm quite surprised at the lack of location tabs Pete.

Here are the equivalents by Revell.

 

[PeterB]

Hi Tim,

 

Somebody must have decided to re-mould them at some point. Did they also correct the wheel bay inserts and do Revell still include the resin radiator intakes?

 

Speaking of which here they are.

The cowlings are a bit rough but have gone on to the wings quite well.

Still a bit of work to do on the joints and the wing leading edge, but getting there. It can be a bit fiddly at times but there are not all that many pieces and it is coming together pretty fast - so far!

 

Pete

[Mike N]

Good stuff, Pete. I reckon that Whitley will be making an appearance at this rate!

 

Mike