36feet10inches
Staff Sergeant
I'm onto my third build now, a Supermarine Seafire Mk IIc MB218/S-A flown from HMS Stalker by 809 NAS of the Fleet Air Arm during Operation Avalanche, the allied landings at the Italian port of Salerno in September 1943. MB218 was written off after making a flapless landing on HMS Unicorn on 9th September 1943; it was promptly chucked over the side to clear the deck. Why the plane, flown by Kiwi pilot Sub.Lt. W.G. Coleman, landed on Unicorn instead of Stalker isn't clear, maybe low on fuel and needed to get down urgently and the deck of Stalker was congested, who knows?
The kit is the Special Hobby Seafire Mk IIc which is based on their Spitfire Mk. Vc, and the scheme is the box art star, a striking looking "clippy"in Temperate Sea Scheme with a shark's mouth. There is some conjecture about the colour of the spinner and/or shark's mouth, red or black in either case, but I've had eyes on a couple of b/w photos of the airframe that I can't reproduce here and am reasonably sure that both were (probably dark) red. Notably some of the panel lines on the fuselage aft of the canopy appeared to be taped up for some reason.
Plenty of Special Hobby kits have found their way into and out of my stash over the years, but I don't remember ever actually completing one! It's fairly typical short-run mixed-media fare, with an etch sheet and some bits of resin.
I've made some progress with it already. Cockpit was a bit fiddly but I was pleasantly surprised that the fuselage closed around it without the need for fettlage:
The wings and fuselage; the kit comes with both resin and styrene cannon, the former being better but I managed to lose one of them. The outboard cannon stubs are nasty, misshapen things anyway so I've ordered some brass replacements for both.
I've stuck the fuselage and wings together since taking the above pic and the fit is a bit of a horror story. More on that later...
Thanks as always for looking in!
The kit is the Special Hobby Seafire Mk IIc which is based on their Spitfire Mk. Vc, and the scheme is the box art star, a striking looking "clippy"in Temperate Sea Scheme with a shark's mouth. There is some conjecture about the colour of the spinner and/or shark's mouth, red or black in either case, but I've had eyes on a couple of b/w photos of the airframe that I can't reproduce here and am reasonably sure that both were (probably dark) red. Notably some of the panel lines on the fuselage aft of the canopy appeared to be taped up for some reason.
Plenty of Special Hobby kits have found their way into and out of my stash over the years, but I don't remember ever actually completing one! It's fairly typical short-run mixed-media fare, with an etch sheet and some bits of resin.
I've made some progress with it already. Cockpit was a bit fiddly but I was pleasantly surprised that the fuselage closed around it without the need for fettlage:
The wings and fuselage; the kit comes with both resin and styrene cannon, the former being better but I managed to lose one of them. The outboard cannon stubs are nasty, misshapen things anyway so I've ordered some brass replacements for both.
I've stuck the fuselage and wings together since taking the above pic and the fit is a bit of a horror story. More on that later...
Thanks as always for looking in!
