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1:48 Battle of Britian Diorama


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Here are two aircraft I'm using in a Battle of Britain diorama I'm in the process of putting together. This is supposed to illustrate one particular day, 10th Sept 1940 when Hurricane equipped 501 Squadron was leaving RAF Gravesend (just down the road from where I went to school) and Spitfire equipped 66 Squadron were arriving, so for one day Spits and Hurries shared the same field!

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The Hurricane is a Hasegawa I got from eBay (not cheap sadly) and the Spit is a Tamiya. I've used PE seat belts in the Spit and the Eduard cockpit set for the Hurricane. When these photos were taken I hadn't fully matted the paintwork down and the Hurricane had its weathering added afterwards. The last photo shows some of the components of the diorama, but more is being added, for example a Standard Tilly from Accurate Armour has just been completed and there will be some more figures and items such as wheel chocks added. I'm looking at scratch building a starter accumulator as well since there doesn't seem to be a readily available one in 1:48 scale (the old Revell set being virtually impossible to source!)

This is my first posting here so please be gentle with me ;)

Edited by Kallisti
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They look really good,well done!I'm looking forward to seeing your diorama.Matador Models do a resin/white metal acc trolley in 1/48th.I don't know if they are still going as I couldn't get hold of them recently so made my own too.But if you can track one down,they are great little models.

Mike

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Hi Kallisti,

I'm not sure the are still going.I tried to order one a couple of months ago and got no luck.The only phone number is a fax line,so I wrote to them and got no reply.I know that Relish Models are hoping to have trolleys made but I think that's some way in the future.I ended up making one from scratch using a Matador one as a guide.If you're after anymore figures,can I suggest you have a look at Dartmoor Military Models and CMK at Hannants-some really great figures from both of these.

Eduard do some too but they have really strange poses!

Mike

Edited by Mikey58
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I've got the Eduard figures - both the Pilots set and ground crew set and yes they are a bit odd. You can see one of them with the oil can on the Hurricane's wing. I've been looking at the others to see what I can do with them. Should be possible to do something. The rest including the red setter, needless to say, are form the great ICM set.

I've written to Matador now so we'll see what happens. I've got several photos of starter trolleys and some blueprints I found somewhere that shows the sizes, so it'll just be a matter of finding the time and patience to bash one together!

@Royster: the choice in 1:48 scale for a Hurricane is severely limited. Either you go for an old Airfix kit with raised panel lines and not very good detail or you shell out a PACKET for an old out of production Hasegawa kit which is a lovely kit and the Eduard PE cockpit just adds to the goodness. But its usually very expensive on evilBay!

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Lovely work, I'm becoming an even greater fan of wartime Hawkers these days.

you certainly don't need anyone to be gentle with you :)

The figures make a huge difference, it'll be a great diorama

( I want to pat the doggie too, mad ain't I?)

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There are two other 1/48 Hurricanes,one is from ARK and the other I can't remember the make now but it's a snap together kit-quite a good one too I according to reviews.The ARK kit is a mix of the Hasegawa and Airfix-lots of detail but crap moulding (I've just made one).

Mike

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Some progress...

Baseboard has been landscaped with Hydrocal and Claycrete and grass added:

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The edges are a bit scrappy so will need some cleaning up but everythign is still drying.

So after that I couldn't resist a test fitting ;)

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Looking at the photos again, I think I've overdone the soil in the crater so thats going to have to come out, but I'm pleased with the way the crater appears. Knowing the land around Gravesend as well as I do having grown up there, its a clay-based soil over chalk, so I kept the colours more orchre than brown as that is the soil that tends to show up. Where I lived we were surrounded by chalk quarries so you got to know what the topsoil looked like and since I'm also interested in Geology (part for my degree contained some Geophysics and Geology) I wanted to get things looking right. So once it was all dry, I gave the crater a dark wash with darkened raw umber paint, then built up layers of colour, lightening until the highlights were "damp" brushed with white artists acrylic. I call it damp brushing as the brush technique was the same as used for dry brushing but the brush had more paint on it that usual for dry brushing.

I still want to add more figures - we have no pilots for instance, plus some more tools, wheel chocks and most importantly that starter accumulator. I've got some fuel drums as well but I'm not sure how appropriate they'd be in an airfield setting. I would have expected there to have been a refuelling truck available. Maybe later when I'm feeling more solvent I might invest in one of the Accurate Armour refuelling trucks :)

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  • 2 months later...

So finally I've returned to this subject and completed things.

Figures have been added including pilots and ground crew and dog! They are from our old friend the ICM RAF groud crew set, but I've added a couple from the Eduard RAF crew. These are not as well moulded as the ICM figures but add a nice variation. The ground has been muddied and oiled up to represent the wear and tear on the airfield.

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Click Here for the full size image

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Click Here for the full size image

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  • 2 years later...

Photos of the real R6800, LZ-N are here.

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234961064-spitfire-r6800-lz-n-gravesend-1940-black-replacement-port-gun-access-panels/

with a link to this thread.

Sorry, full blown Hurricane anorak warning....

Your Hurricane above has the wrong prop [unless you have a pic] , with the later 'bullet' rotol, coming into service at the end of the BoB,

The roundels are to far out on the wings [there is a specified distance, centred at 2/3 out from fuselage IIRC, the Ducimus monograph has the roundel centre being 80 inches in from the tip, 1 and 2/3rd inch or 42.3 mm in 1/48th - this goes for all Hurricanes with standard 49" roundels AFAIK]

The inside of the gear doors [and wheel well] are grey-green, they should be painted aluminium, and the cockpit tubing and seat as well, actually everywhere [engine bay, gun bay apart from the cockpit walls and backplate.

There have been threads here on this, and the preserved Finnish and a couple of Russian wrecks all have this, later [1942 maybe] there was a switch to grey-green eg -

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234958668-classic-airframes-hurricane-mk-1-fabric-wing/#entry1614956

I've only learned this in the last few years, and more bits of info come up while searching. Hope of use to others even if a bit late here.

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