1/72 Spitfire PR1G Diorama

Gallery Article by Matt Bearman on July 3 2009

 

Although the RAF had been engaging in high altitude, high speed reconnaissance for some time by 1941, the need for low-altitude photography on the many days when European targets were clouded over and invisible to high-flying aircraft resulted in the Spitfire PR1G. These aircraft carried one oblique and two vertical cameras mounted close together in the fuselage behind the cockpit along with full armourment as they had a much higher chance of being intercepted low down. Often these Spitfires were finished in a light shade of pink, the theory being that when seen from the ground and flying beneath cloud this was the best camouflage. 

By the spring of 1941, some of these aircraft were flying from St Eval in Cornwall, photographing the German fleet moored in French naval bases. This scene as meant to representative of a dispersal pan in one corner of this airfield on a winter's afternoon, the main players being a pink PR1G, and a Bedford QL refuelling lorry. 

The Spitfire was built from the Tamiya Mk1. Some have criticised the wing shape on this kit – true, it doesn’t have the complete precision of the ancient Airfix offering in terms of planform, but to listen to some critics it renders the aircraft unrecognisable! This isn’t the case, and a few minutes sanding easily gets it into shape. Details are from the Aires set. I just added a pilot’s mirror (got to keep the lipstick looking good in a pink aeroplane) and the undercarriage indicator rods.

The vacform hood was from Aeroclub. The curved glass cover of the oblique camera port was made from a section of old Spitfire canopy selected for the correct curvature.

The one exception to my use of the Aires set were the engine bearers. There was no way I could get the lower tubes of this one-piece moulding to fit their stations, tucked inside the wing root leading edges. They were simply far too wide, and to get them into place would have necessitated hacking back the wing roots in an outboard direction to quite unacceptable levels, completely destroying the accurate complex curvature of the fillet panels.

I resorted to the metal engine bearers from Aeroclub, which of course didn't fit the Aires engine block, or the bottom cowling. Some serious (and risky) surgery was required, and in the end I ended up with ragged results and a bottom cowl made from an HP Hampden bomb-bay door! For me, this is the least satisfactory part of the completed model to look at, and a lesson learned.

Photo 5 below.   With hindsight, I’d have filed the bearers down a little further – they look a little thick and chunky with paint on. I bent the cowling rails by accident when removing them, and never managed to get them back into shape.  Engine 'plumbing' was built from fuse wire, copper wire, and stretched sprue.

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Photo 05

  

Not sure what scale the Airwaves weighted Spitfire wheels are supposed to be, but they sure aren’t 1/72 like it says on the packet! I ended up using the fairly accurate hubs from the Airfix 1/72 Spitfire inserted into the wider, squarer-sectioned tyres of the Tamiya. There are also stretched sprue brake pipes running down the undercarriage legs. Unfortunately, the starboard leg had an accident on the day of the photoshoot.. 

For the pinkification process, I chose PlastiKote Satin Super 'Cameo Pink' in a great big spray can from the DIY megastore. This is as near as dammit the 'right' shade, judged by photographing in daylight, in monochome and comparing the results with the few existing original photographs.

Decals are from Model Alliance. Second deliberate mistake – yes, the serial IS spurious! It belongs to a PR Spitfire, just not a pink one from St Eval. Attempts to put an accurate serial together from my spares box ended in tears as decals split, folded or spontaneously combusted (ok, I made the last one up, but that’s about the only thing that didn’t go wrong). In the end, this was all I had left. Sorry purists and sticklers..

The airman’s ladder was scratch built from an old credit card. Not RAF standard, but a lot of fitters and riggers brought along their own, apparently (ladders, not credit cards). The airman himself is from the Airfix RAF refuelling set, of which more later! (Tip of the day – if a cowling refuses to fit properly and sits at an angle, add one airman in the process of removing it and no-one would ever guess)

For the concrete pan, after much trial and error I arrived at thick layers of appropriately mixed artists’ watercolours over a dark base, left to dry thoroughly and then scored into 1.5 inch (9 foot) slabs with a craft knife (always better than drawing them on). Grass in the cracks looks good. The grassy areas were landscaped with a little filler (just a few subtle undulations) and painted green/brown. Then static grass was applied (nothing too scientific – lashings of Copydex, sprinkle the grass on between finger and thumb, and perk it up on top of a good old fashioned CRT telly. Remember to switch the telly on).

The dry stone wall was assembled stone-by-stone from semi-dry filler (squished slightly into place to look like carefully selected and fitted stones), with slates on top from a thin dry sheet of filler. There are many national and regional varieties of dry stone wall – I expect railway modellers are way ahead of me here. This is meant to look like a Cornish one.

The RAF standard airfield perimeter fence posts are matchsticks cut to length and coated in Copydex, textured with a sprinkling of sand and sprayed with a fine mottle of grey primer. The wires between the posts are stretched sprue. (Tip of the day – if your stretched sprue wires are saggy, taughten them up by touching them momentarily with the head of a recently-extinguished match. The plastic contracts instantly, pulling everything straight. It works on biplane rigging, too).

Finally, the truck. Old hands will instantly recognise Airfix’s Bedford QL. I don’t have much to add to Greg Ewald's excellent review at modelingmadness.com, except to advise that you dry-fit everything, and when it comes to fit, assume nothing.

Additions included the quarter-light pillars, one wing mirror and the flexible hoses leading from the tips of the refuelling wands.

I’m sure many readers will already have spotted my third deliberate mistake. The high-visibility yellow-topped paint scheme of the Bedford QL is completely wrong for 1941 – I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to make this an unusually colourful wartime scene. (A drab camouflage scheme would be more authentic, but boring). One just has to imagine a local senior officer being about three years ahead of the game in adopting this scheme for his airfield’s vehicles.

Lastly a word on the decals – you will need to trim them to the edges of the printing. The transparent edges will – and did – overlap several raised parts and edges in a way that no amount of Decalfix will.. er.. fix. In other words, many of the decals, untrimmed, simply do not fit the model. All the same, this was a very satisfying build – my first model vehicle for 27 years!

 

Copious amounts of blood, sweat, tears and thinners went into this one, and I learned a lot along the way (this is my first full diorama). I would recommend the Tamiya Spit Mk1 in conjunction with the Aires detail set to anyone. I personally think the single pink colour shows off the aircraft’s lines more than any camouflage scheme, and it’s certainly a talking point. 

Thanks Steve!

Photo 15 and 16 by Sam Potter

Matt Bearman

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Photos and text © by Matt Bearman