1/72 Heller Tempest Mk.V

Gallery Article by Paolo De Sanctis on Nov 9 2010

 

The aircraft: the Tempest was a development of the earlier Typhoon, a very good ground-attack fighter. The Tempest entered in service in 1944 as fighter and it was so good that thanks to its top speed of 438 m.p.h. it was able to destroy some 638 V1 flying bombs in a period between June and September of that year.  It was also the mainstay of the defence against that missile menace.  The so famous top scoring French Ace, le Capitaine Pierre H. Clostermann, DSO, DFC became an ace flying the Tempest and later commanding the 122° RAF Tactical Fighter Wing.

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The model: I' built this kit quite OOB in the far 1990.  At that time I was looking to enhance my skill level so I scratchbuilt some items in the cockpit, being this last a good basis to begin. The Heller kit was the best and was a pleasure to build and very little filler was needed.  On the colours side I failed to choose the Dark Green 34079 among the paint pots; I used the Humbrol 149 instead of HB1/30. Quite good the others, they are H. 123 for Ocean Grey and H.64 for Medium Sea Grey.  I replaced the fuselage sky codes with some taken from a Superscale sheet and I painted the invasion stripes using cellotape.

With this kit I wanted to show the aircraft of the RAF Ace Roland P. Beaumont when he flew over Normandy in the Summer 1944.  Many greetings to all the ARCair friends.

Paolo De Sanctis

Photos and text © by Paolo De Sanctis