1/48 Tamiya Lancaster Mark I

Gallery Article by Chuck Sawyer on Sept 24 2010

 

After about 6 months of work, I’ve finally finished a Lancaster build for my uncle, who was a Bomb-Aimer on a Lancaster in the early part of 1945. Along with his crew, he flew 29 “Ops” without being shot down or captured, which is quite a feat, especially for RAF Squadron 101 in which he flew. Squadron 101 had more sorties over Germany than any other squadron and suffered more casualties than any other squadron. This squadron alone lost 145 Lancasters and had 1,176 killed in action. The mortality rate of Bomber Command overall was a staggering 55%.

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The parts used are the latest Tamiya 61105 kit, a couple of Eduard photo-etch detail kits, AeroMaster decals (mix and match of 2 different sets), Belcher Bits engines and quite a few scratch parts I had to make. For the finish, I used MM enamel and Alclad paints exclusively. 

I spent quite a bit of time researching what the code letters and serial number was for my uncle’s Lancaster and, with the help of the Lancaster-Archive Forum and my uncle’s log book, I found out that it was SR-V2 and ME419 respectively. My uncle requested that some nose art he had taken a picture of during the war be included (below), so I altered the code to “SR-V” to match this art which was made from scratch.  Unfortunately I found out the hard way that home made decals of light lettering on a dark background do not work very well, so I changed the lettering to white to make sure it would be legible. Since no build is perfect, I wasn’t going to worry about some minor details as long as I still captured the “spirit” of my uncle’s Lanc.

Anyway, here in all her war weary glory, is “Virgin Vickie”!

Chuck Sawyer

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Photos and text © by Chuck Sawyer