The true old times are dead (1/72 92 Squadron Lightning F.2)

[Procopius]

I. The End

 

"This was the last time that such a thing could happen. This was the last time that London would be the capital of the world. This was an act of mourning for the imperial past. This marked the final act in Britain's greatness. This was a great gesture of self-pity and after this the coldness of reality and the status of Scandinavia... It was a celebration of a great thing that we did in the past."
-- Patrick O'Donovan, The Observer, 31 January 1965

 

"My life is over, but it has not yet ended."
-- WSC to Diana Churchill, c.1960

 

“He is not a man for whom I ever had esteem. Always in the wrong, always surrounded by crooks, a most unsuccessful father.”

-- Evelyn Waugh to Ann Fleming, c. late January 1965

 

He had, virtually everyone agreed -- even if they believed it for wildly differing reasons and could agree on nothing else -- lived too long.

 

Little more than a month prior, the Beatles released their fourth studio album, setting "Eight Days a Week" loose upon an unsuspecting world, and William Hartnell had rolled up the Dalek invasion of Earth in six episodes. It was inconvenient that he should die then, to provide an uncomfortable reminder of a world that had ceased existing almost imperceptibly, by degrees, until the change was so far advanced that to be confronted with the reminder of what had once been, for good or ill, was jarring. And yet he had known it was coming, or rather, for they are not the same thing, he had been seized by that powerful certainty which so often lead him astray in his long, eventful life, until at last it made him immortal, whatever happened to the wasted prison of flesh that failed him at last on 24 January of 1965. 

 

As the barge that bore his body made its way up the Thames, they came. He had been asked, long after the war, after he had been prime minister twice, exceeding the promise of his cruel and revered father exponentially, after the little boy whom nobody loved and who had made himself difficult to love stood on that balcony in 1945 and told the cheering crowds "This is your victory", and they had roared back, voices thick and heavy with love, "No, it is yours", after all of that, what year of his life he would relive again had he the chance. "1940, every time. Every time." Time had stopped, or rather ceased to exist for him then. Everything before fell away; everything after faded into insignificance, washed out by the bright flare of that single perfect year when everything fell apart, and he picked up that shattered sword and that broken shield and made the choice that meant that all of this was happening now, twenty-four years and some months later.

 

They came. All the fighting services had been there on the ground, the RAF escort, the Grenadier Guards, the Navy (always so ambivalent about him -- Somerville, who loathed him, had written to his wife that "we are just as much a dictator country as either Germany or Italy and one day the British public will wake up and ask what we are fighting for") and the Royal Marines all had played their part. But at last, as the Havengore set off, the heirs of his paladins arrived. 

 

Sixteen Lightnings in four diamonds of four dropped, one after the other, from the murk of the dead January sky and roared low over the Thames. In 1940, that magical year already receding into myth, before the glorious boys who had not burned to death in falling aeroplanes, or drowned in the Channel, or been dashed to pieces against the fields and towns of a world on fire, eating itself alive insatiably, entered inconvenient middle age, still alive, still with opinions, able to embarrass and annoy the children who now inherited the world they had saved, before all of that, the American correspondent Vincent Sheean had stood on the white cliffs of Dover and gazed into the summer sky of a world that seemed destined for a darkness more profound and more profane than could be conceived by the human mind. He had written then: "The flash of the Spitfire’s wing, then, through the mist glare of the summer sky, was the first flash of a sharpened sword; they would fight, they would hold out." For the last time, the wings of the RAF would gleam under the shrouded sun for him, elegaic and mournful despite the overwhelming roar from their engines, a sound still not loud enough to rouse the dead. 

 

II. πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ, ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα

 

And well for thee, saying in my dark hour,
When all the purport of my throne hath failed,
That quick or dead thou holdest me for King.
King am I, whatsoever be their cry;
And one last act of kinghood shalt thou see
Yet, ere I pass. 

-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King, "The Passing of Arthur"

 

"I thought Winston talked about the most frightful rot...I despair when he works himself up to a passion of emotion when he ought to make his brain think and reason."

-- Edward Wood, Lord Halifax, diary entry for 27 May 1940

 

"THE PRIME MINISTER said that the nations which went down fighting rose again, but those which surrendered tamely were finished."

-- CAB 65/13, WM (40) 145: Confidential Annex to War Cabinet Minutes, 16:00 meeting on 28 May 1940

 

But you don't hoot at Stalin — that's “not done” —
Only at Churchill; I've no wish to praise him,
I'd gladly shoot him when the war is won,
Or now, if there was someone to replace him.
But unlike some, I'll pay him what I owe him;
There was a time when empires crashed like houses,
And many a pink who'd titter at your poem
Was glad enough to cling to Churchill's trousers.
Christ! How they huddled up to one another
Like day-old chicks about their foster-mother!

 

I'm not a fan for “fighting on the beaches,”
And still less for the “breezy uplands” stuff,
I seldom listen-in to Churchill's speeches,
But I'd far sooner hear that kind of guff
Than your remark, a year or so ago,
That if the Nazis came you'd knuckle under
And peaceably “accept the status quo.”
Maybe you would! But I've a right to wonder
Which will sound better in the days to come,
“Blood, toil and sweat” or “Kiss the Nazi's bum.”
-- Eric Blair (writing as George Orwell), "From One Non-Combatant to Another (A Letter to ‘Obadiah Hornbooke’ [Alex Comfort])", Tribune, 18 June 1943
 

Here he is now, alive, at his moment, the moment when, as if by magic, a switch was flipped, and he transformed from an erratic failure into the hero he had always dreamed of being, when every melodramatic, emotive instinct that had driven him relentlessly to disaster after disaster drove him to an act of self-abnegation sublime enough to give his country at least eighty more years of life. 

 

It isn't September yet, and he has not yet sat with Park and seen too few squadrons being marshalled to hold back the might of something terrible and so far inexorable. It is May, and he has been Prime Minister for only a few weeks, a moment he has perhaps waited for all his adult life and longer too. It is gift and curse, for it is, at this moment, no longer a position where raw ambition is enough to see one through. Political survival is suddenly secondary to the survival of a small island and part of another, separated from a continent now ruined, possibly for ever, by a thin strip of sea, barely more than twenty miles, practically close enough to touch. 

 

And now, he is sitting at a table with men who have outmaneuvered him at the oleaginous game of politics for a decade or more, men who know him to be an imbecile, wrong about everything, and Lord Halifax, his opposite in every way, is patiently explaining to him that to continue the war past the defeat of France, indeed, for any length of time at all, will result inexorably in the destruction of the one thing everyone knows the arch-imperialist loves, that massive empire, and the ineluctable bankruptcy of a country that cannot afford a long war. And perhaps, if he was the caricature so many for and against him believe him to be, it might have given him pause. Even before he was eclipsed as the worst chancellor of the exchequer in history by subsequent developments, he was still capable of basic math. But it is also safe to say that he never truly cared about money; he was never truly financially secure until after the war. In 1937, when he began The History of the English Speaking Peoples, its publication delayed by his obdurately remaining in politics until 1955, long past the patience of his party and all but his closest friends, he wrote: "And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round. Let us then declare that King Arthur and his noble knights, guarding the Sacred Flame of Christianity and the theme of a world order, sustained by valour, physical strength, and good horses and armour, slaughtered innumerable hosts of foul barbarians and set decent folk an example for all time." Was he thinking of those words during that awful May of 1940? We know Arthur, or at least Tennyson's Arthur, is much on his mind, for he will reference a stanza on 4 June, when committing a nation to fight on the beaches and beyond: 
 

"The great French Army was very largely, for the time being, cast back and disturbed by the onrush of a few thousands of armored vehicles. May it not also be that the cause of civilization itself will be defended by the skill and devotion of a few thousand airmen?

 

"There never has been, I suppose, in all the world, in all the history of war, such an opportunity for youth. The Knights of the Round Table, the Crusaders, all fall back into the past-not only distant but prosaic; these young men, going forth every morn to guard their native land and all that we stand for, holding in their hands these instruments of colossal and shattering power, of whom it may be said that:

 

"'Every morn brought forth a noble chance
"'And every chance brought forth a noble knight,'

"deserve our gratitude, as do all the brave men who, in so many ways and on so many occasions, are ready, and continue ready to give life and all for their native land."

 

In context, the stanza is a mournful one: "For now I see the true old times are dead,/When every morning brought a noble chance..." And there is something apocalyptic in the choice to fight on, as there was when Britain ended the Great War. All present remember the world that 1914 swept away. 

 

Archilochus, a poet beloved by the ancient Greeks, but of whose work only fragmentary quotations remain, is said to have remarked "πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ, ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα." This is generally translated to mean "a fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing", though I have always rendered it to my children as "the fox knows many tricks, but the hedgehog one mighty truth." For the hedgehog, the one big thing, the mighty truth, if you will indulge me, is that so long as it remains true to its essential nature, so long as it remains curled up, the fox cannot destroy it. Winston's idee fixe is Britain's greatness, and he has decided that it would be greater to lose the Empire and see every reactionary cause he has fought his whole life for (and there have been many, with more to come) destroyed than to give in now, at this moment, to that man, who somehow has brought something to life that must be burnt out of the world.  

 

III. The Beginning

 

 

And here he is, aged seven in 1881, the same age as my Winnie now, and looking so much like him to my eye that it hurts, still just a little boy, living without a purpose in a world that will not know Hitler for eight more years. He is for now, unencumbered by destiny, or greatness, or the unmet expectations of his father, not yet ideological shorthand or a distorted mirror for those who despise or love who they imagine him to be, just a naughty little boy. He has yet to stumble and crash his way through history. Though probably not his parents, there was someone who loved him and tucked him in at night, who held him when he cried -- even the Victorians were not so wholly insensate to human feeling as we like to believe -- and hoped he would never grow up while wishing he would do so faster. In fifty-nine years, this little boy, grown old but still, somewhere, deep inside, the same person, will be called upon to pull forth from his deepest self something like the will of a nation. 

 

IV. (and finally) The Build

 

I hope you will forgive the lengthy -- even by the standards of my vapid pseudointellectual pontifications -- introduction before we actually talk about the model. If not, I understand.  During the RAF flypast on 30 January 1965, Lightnings from four squadrons, Battle of Britain veterans all, participated: 19, 56, 92, and 111. This would have represented a substantial portion of the Lightning force in 1965, and given the type's serviceability early on in its career, probably also a large percentage of the aircraft capable of generating sorties on any given day. (Duncan Sandys, Churchill's one-time son-in-law, the only minster of defence to have been punched by the Chief of the Imperial General Staff in the course of his duties, may have inadvertently done the Lightning a favour after trying to throttle it and all other manned aircraft in their cradles, by phasing out National Service, for after the end of conscription, serviceability slowly improved, though it didn't peak until almost the end of the aircraft's career.) In any case, my research outside of archival sources suggests that one of the aircraft participating was XM190/G of Treble One. By coincidence, this aircraft was lost due to that frequent killer of Lightnings, an engine fire on March 15 -- my birthday -- in 1966* after transfer to 226 OCU (111 re-equipped with new F.3s in early 1965), with American exchange pilot Captain A C Petersen, who ejected successfully, at the controls. Happily a photo of the aircraft with 111 exists.

 

XM190 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

As you can see, most interestingly for an F.1A, she has her cannon mounted in the lower nose, rather than the upper as is typical for this mark. I am attempting to obtain a digital copy of the relevant portion of 111's ORB from the National Archives to confirm the aircraft was used in the flypast, but I have a large and expensive collection of Lightning decal sheets and whatever I uncover, I should be able to represent a Treble One Lightning overflying Churchill's funeral. I will be using the Sword kit, the best of a series of rather weak options for an early Lightning (if I could afford it, I would almost switch to 1/48 for Airfix's excellent 1960s jets in that scale, but how could I afford it or offer enough space to display any that I actually built, instead of hording?), as I don't relish the thought of doing all the wing cutting on the Airfix F.2A/F.6 to use the Alley Cat conversion set. 

 

As we all know that more aftermarket=more gooder, I am delighted to inform you that this kit is using a boatload. I have a set of the Quickboost intakes for the Airfix Lightning, just in case; a resin seat from Barracuda; resin exhausts from Reskit (I know the kit comes with one, but I built at least two Sword F.1A/F.3 kits back in the day, and both had hideously warped resin exhausts that were a trial. I would like a different trial this time. Assuming it even fits, it was allegedly made for the Airfix kit); and en route to me, a turned metal shock cone and intake ring; and also another one of Master's ludicrously small pitot tubes, none of the ones on the surviving Lightnings I built back in the day having survived the tender and enthusiastic ministrations of my own Winston. Barracuda have also been promising to release some new Lightning aftermarket this week for the past two weeks, so if time and funds permit, some of that may find its way into the build as well. 

 

Anyway, we're off. I enjoin you tenderly to please check out the Wants link in my signature -- if you like my builds, you can support more of the same awful crap by selling me things I want, and if you hate them, you can squeeze precious money out of me like the juice from a pomegranate. 

 

 

 

 

* Obviously a few years before I was born.

 

 

[Stew Dapple]

My gods Edward, you do write a good intro. I'm ambivalent about the Lightning, having had the wits scared out of me (never to return) by one roaring perpendicular to the line of the crowd from behind at low-level when we were all looking at another aircraft in front of us at one of the Duxford air shows back in the day, when such things were probably considered character-building and a jolly jape. It was, though, an undeniably impressive display of raw power, you could feel it.

 

So I'll tag along for the build just because. Hope you have a good one mate  

 

Cheers,

 

STew

[Pete in Lincs]

I'm here too. At 07:15 on a Saturday morning with green tea and biscuits. Already hooked on this build, inspired by WSC's words, and ready for battle with the day.

Have at them Sirrah!

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

I'm in. The Tremblers were a regular feature at the RAF Leuchars airshows my father and grandfather took me to every year for the first half of my life.

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

My one and only was an 1/48 Airfix F.2a built as an F.3 of Treble III. 
 

Hope yours turns out as well if not better. 

[stevehnz]

I've never associated Churchill with Lightnings before but after that masterly intro, I shall henceforth. Nicely done mate. A master class of erudition. I'll stick around for the rest of it.

Steve.

[Ray S]

A great intro, and yet another reason to enjoy a Lightning. 

 

It was Singapore and Leuchars that got me 'into' Lightnings in a big way, as at Leuchars we lived near (relatively) the end of the runway, and it was a similar scenario to @Stew Dapple which really got me loving the Lightning, when they did the vertical climb right above our heads! When I locate a time machine, I want to go back to those times just for that experience again.

 

I am sure you will do a fantastic job on this, I have loved the three Sword 1/72 Lightnings I have built, but always kept to what was in the box, except markings.

 

Ray

[Winded Penguin]

I'm intrigued. I'll stick around too, please.

[Hamden]

 

I'll take a seat for this as well, another to remember being caught out by the arrival of a Lightning  from behind the crowd line (Not allowed anymore) with full reheat with it then pulling vertical. The noise and vibration through the ground still remembered to this day - NO ear defenders back then either!

 

     Stay safe     Roger

[Terry1954]

Got to be in on an Edward build of a Lighting, one of Britains finest interceptors, if a tad fuel thirsty!

 

Had to comment now in order to be on page one.....will now go back and properly read that backstory!!

 

T.

[tonyh]

Here Leader….

[Fritag]

3 hours ago, Stew Dapple said:

had the wits scared out of me (never to return) by one roaring perpendicular to the line of the crowd from behind at low-level when we were all looking at another aircraft in front of us at one of the Duxford air shows back in the day

 

51 minutes ago, Hamden said:

another to remember being caught out by the arrival of a Lightning  from behind the crowd line (Not allowed anymore) with full reheat with it then pulling vertical. The noise and vibration through the ground still remembered to this day

 

And another.  Southend-on-Sea airshow when I was a single digit or early double digit lad.  Cue shock, awe, tears and a burning desire to be that man.

[CedB]

I'm in, hopefully for the long term…

 

I was still in short trousers but remember the funeral and the effect it had on my parents. Sadness is not the word for it. The man that had led them through very hard times of which they spoke little…

 

Ah, Lightnings. I'm of that age where it was the dream of every boy to fly one. Of course I'm too tall. As David Gunson says in his classic 'What goes up might come down' if I'd had to eject from one the dashboard would have chopped me off at the knees. Not so an old colleague, 'Bang Out' Benger, who ejected from his over the North Sea after both engines caught fire. Months in hospital and now two inches shorter. Those were the days…

 

Onwards Edward!

[Mr T]

I'll keep an eye on this one. I have the Sword kit but not built it, so it will help in the future. Churchill was the prime example of a leader right for the times. His second stint as PM was not a success. In truth, he was too old by then. At various times the Tories have been fond of invoking his spirit,when history shows that in May 1940, a lot of Tory MPs would have preferred Halifax, as would the King. Churchill survived partly because the Labour and Liberal members of the War Cabinet supported him as he would keep fighting, whereas Halifax was suspected of being ready to do a deal with Hitler. 

[Dave Swindell]

5 hours ago, Procopius said:

As you can see, most interestingly for an F.1A, she has her cannon mounted in the lower nose, rather than the upper as is typical for this mark.

The upper cannon barrel fairings can just be made out in the photo, and missiles fitted = no lower cannon. There was an interchangeable belly pack that provided space for either the cannons and ammunition, or the missile control units. With the missiles fitted the lower cannon barrel fairings remained, but cannons themselves weren't fitted.

[jackroadkill]

That's a superb intro, and as such I'll gloss over all the things about Churchill that I don't like, because who wants to spoil wiring like that above?  I know the square root of not much about Lightnings and never saw one in the air, even though there were plenty flying when I was in my younger days; I suppose this may be due to the Lightning not being known for being much use in tight and twisty Welsh valleys.  That notwithstanding I'll enjoy seeing how this build takes shape, and will especially enjoy the prose that accompanies it.

 

Thanks Edward,

 

JRK

[AliGauld]

A fantastic intro leading to what will be another spectacular build.

Really looking forward to this one.

I'll tag along if that's all right.

 

Cheers

Alistair

[gingerbob]

6 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

I'm here too. At 07:15 on a Saturday morning with green tea and biscuits. Already hooked on this build, inspired by WSC's words, and ready for battle with the day.

Have at them Sirrah!

 

Oi, pass me a biscuit!

 

I've never much cared for the Lightning, consequently I only have two Airfix and an Aeroclub (vac) two-seater... go figure.  Nevertheless, it is a "standard British bird".  I do rather like the context into which you have placed the subject.  I tried to go look at ORBs for you, but the appropriate one is not available for online viewing.  I've got some things to do now, later I'll poke around some more...

 

bob

[ijs302]

oh yes please you can,t beat a frightning build, time to pull up a chair if i may 

                                                                                        ian

[PLC1966]

First page.

 

Get in............

 

Earliest memory of Lightnings, Colitishall I guess 1973, watching over the fence line, at about 6 or 7 years of age.  Had to get nearer, fell straight into a

ditch full of stinging nettles.  But I can remember seeing a jet taking off, being out on it's tail and bang, gone.

[Brandy]

Dear God, Edward, you really need to do this writing thing professionally. For yourself not someone else!

 I don't think anyone who experienced the awesome power of this aircraft will ever forget it. You could literally feel the power. The very air, not just the ground, shook and vibrated. It was THE aircraft that I lusted after as a child/teen wannabe pilot.

I'm in! 

 

Ian 

[europapete]

WOW! What an Intro! I also remember them at the airshows. Finningly, Linton-on-Ouse for me. Regards, Pete in RI

[Zack]

6 hours ago, stevehnz said:

I've never associated Churchill with Lightnings before but after that masterly intro, I shall henceforth. Nicely done mate. A master class of erudition. I'll stick around for the rest of it.

Steve.

 

Ditto that - can I have the bang seat please...

[KingTiger435]

How exciting, looking forward to seeing this one...

[Procopius]

23 hours ago, Stew Dapple said:

I'm ambivalent about the Lightning, having had the wits scared out of me (never to return) by one roaring perpendicular to the line of the crowd from behind at low-level when we were all looking at another aircraft in front of us at one of the Duxford air shows back in the day, when such things were probably considered character-building and a jolly jape. It was, though, an undeniably impressive display of raw power, you could feel it.

 

21 hours ago, Hamden said:

 

I'll take a seat for this as well, another to remember being caught out by the arrival of a Lightning  from behind the crowd line (Not allowed anymore) with full reheat with it then pulling vertical. The noise and vibration through the ground still remembered to this day - NO ear defenders back then either!

 

19 hours ago, Fritag said:

And another.  Southend-on-Sea airshow when I was a single digit or early double digit lad.  Cue shock, awe, tears and a burning desire to be that man.

 

Sensing a theme here...

 

I'm extremely envious of all of you who got to see a Lightning in flight. There's a T.5, XS422, being restored in Mississippi, of all places, about fifty or sixty miles from New Orleans in Louisiana, and apparently, if one can get there for one of the two times a year they do a ground run, you can hear and see it for free, but it's not the same. I do hope to get out there, but the distance involved makes it a bit tricky for me. Perhaps they'll actually manage to get her airborne in my lifetime.

 

I'll confess that as a boy, I was a firm partisan of the Tornado F.2 (and truly, knowledge only brings pain, for now I know that in the F.2 incarnation, it was approximately as useful an air defense fighter as the Goodyear Blimp), and didn't much rate the Lightning, which to my child's eyes looked suspiciously like a MiG-21. The Lightning has grown on me since. I was actually rather surprised that it was by all accounts fairly pleasant to fly, which doesn't seen to have been the case very often with early supersonic jets. Lightnings may have periodically burst into flames in flight, but at least they didn't sabre dance like the F-100, or just...explode every now and then, like the MiG-19. 

 

19 hours ago, CedB said:

Ah, Lightnings. I'm of that age where it was the dream of every boy to fly one. Of course I'm too tall. As David Gunson says in his classic 'What goes up might come down' if I'd had to eject from one the dashboard would have chopped me off at the knees. Not so an old colleague, 'Bang Out' Benger, who ejected from his over the North Sea after both engines caught fire. Months in hospital and now two inches shorter. Those were the days…

 

Good news for Past Ced! This was definitely the belief in the RAF when the F.1 entered service, and the first pilots were restricted to a height of five foot six inches or less (and apparently referred to as "the league of little men"), but a series of not-terribly-scientific-sounding demonstrations for new pilots at the OCU, wherein a tall trainee was placed in a disarmed seat in an aircraft and then rapidly winched out, seems to have left everyone who tried it with their kneecaps and all parts south, at least according to Peter Caygill's Lightning: The Operational History. 

 

16 hours ago, gingerbob said:

I tried to go look at ORBs for you, but the appropriate one is not available for online viewing. 

 

 

Indeed not. I had to pay the National Archives the princely sum of £8 to have a poke 'round for me, the results of which they'll hopefully appraise me of by the 22nd.

 

19 hours ago, Dave Swindell said:

The upper cannon barrel fairings can just be made out in the photo, and missiles fitted = no lower cannon. There was an interchangeable belly pack that provided space for either the cannons and ammunition, or the missile control units. With the missiles fitted the lower cannon barrel fairings remained, but cannons themselves weren't fitted.

 

And once again, Cunningham's Law proves itself. I'm obliged to you very much, Dave, I know very little about Lightnings, even in comparison to the other things (everything) I know very little about. The SAM book on Lightnings has not proved very helpful, and the DACO one I purchased is somewhere between Point A and Point Me, snarled up in the pre-Christmas postal logjams. With the guns absent, would the barrel fairings have the gunports covered, or would they be opened? It seemed like most photos of F.1As I saw had no gunports on the lower fairings. Though mayyyyybe XM190's sister F.1A XM189 has the lower fairing gunports as well? The upper ones seem to be closed up entirely.

 

 

Any help is greatly appreciated. Better to know now than in the RFI (if we even make it to one, knock wood).

 

15 hours ago, Brandy said:

Dear God, Edward, you really need to do this writing thing professionally. For yourself not someone else!

 

 

 

That was my childhood goal after I realized I wasn't brave and had weak eyesight. To paraphrase Emperor Hirohito, my life situation has not developed necessarily to my advantage. 

 

19 hours ago, jackroadkill said:

That's a superb intro, and as such I'll gloss over all the things about Churchill that I don't like

 

Wise.

 

21 hours ago, Ray S said:

I am sure you will do a fantastic job on this, I have loved the three Sword 1/72 Lightnings I have built, but always kept to what was in the box, except markings.

 

I built two, and was plagued by bad luck with both -- on one the NMF was stripped while masking, and on the the other I wrecked the ailerons and had to loot a Sword T.4 kit for replacements. Surely I've gotten better since then though. Or, perhaps, maybe I haven't at least gotten any stupider?

 

Anyway, speaking of not keeping to what was in the box, the metal nose ring and shock cone arrived. They looked very nice.

 

Naturally, given that I was working with a currently extremely rare and effectively irreplaceable kit, using a piece of aftermarket for an entirely different kit, late at night after a long day of attending a hellish birthday party for a schoolfriend one of your children*, and my own skill level is indifferent, I immediately proceeded to cut off the kit intake ring to replace it with the metal one.

 

 

 

Here we met our first hurdle: the Sword plastic is extremely thick, several hundred times thicker than that of the Airfix kit, so thick that if it were a scale-accurate representation of the Lightning's skin, the aircraft would be both impervious to conventional weaponry and incapable of flight. A sh...edload of sanding and scraping followed.

 

 

Gentle reader, I was not even close to having the nose sanded down enough to admit the intake ring when this photo was taken, though I did manage to stab my own finger with a scalpel blade soon after. It's the little things.

 

By the time I had the port side more or less hewn into shape, my hand seemed permanently contorted into a sort of claw, and proved reluctant to rearrange itself to a more pleasing shape. Consequently, I got out the Dremel for the starboard side, since the only thing more I could do at this point was compound my initial error by melting the kit in a flurry of high-speed sanding.

 

I'm happy to report I did not melt the nose, and did only minor cosmetic damage to an area that was never going to escape filler under my tender ministrations.

 

 

I can't escape the nasty suspicion that the intake ring may demand shimming of the fuselage or some other field expedient solution that will in turn throw everything else off, which just goes to show: never take risks, and never try anything new.

 

 

 

 

As you may have gathered, the whole process so far has caused me a certain amount of anxiety, and I can't help but feel I've merely kicked the can down the road to when I close up the fuselage. 

 

I also cut one of the Barracude Mk4 seats off the casting block and began sanding it down and all that. I have the nasty suspicion at present that the resin seat was just designed based off of an actual seat, without reference to any kit cockpit. Certainly it doesn't quiiiite fit on the centreline of the Sword cockpit:

 

 

 

 

Since the little panels will all be provided by photoetch, the odds of this not fitting properly strike me as high. And that's before we come to the question of how the seat ought to be angled, as I have no clue.

 

 

I regret cutting off the kit intake ring, thick and misshapen though it was, and likely will never attempt it again with a Sword Lightning. 

 

In other news, the Chuggernaut has returned home from Michigan, along with Mrs P. 

 

 

She is struggling to poop, but as I tell all my children, daddy never poops, so he cannot relate to their struggles in that line.

 

 

Anyway, I was going to go to the grotto, do fifteen minutes of work on the kit and go to bed at ten, but now it's 1:30 AM, so my excellent time management skills have struck again.

 

 

 

* Some vile little brat sat there absolutely annihilating poor Winston with cruel mockery, even getting the other kids to chant at him -- and poor Win is actually in these situations too articulate; his classmates cannot understand him when he's agitated because he talks to them as he would talk to me -- while this kid's mother just stood on (especially galling to me, as I'm one of those parents who's mortified when their children misbehave in public, and Winston keeps me mortified almost non-stop), and me with the knowledge I couldn't just swear at the kid until he was a sobbing wreck because Mrs P is a teacher at their school just sitting there, strewing, and trying to stop the kid's heart with my mind. It's against the law to hit other people's children, because otherwise people would never be able to bring themselves to stop.