Supermarine Spitfire Mk.Vb 1/72 Tamiya

I built a classic kit of a classic WWII fighter in the summer – just like David Koktavý, who presented two beautiful Thunderbolts here – in honour of the recently passed away Mr Shunsaku Tamiya. However, instead of the marking from the kit, I chose an interesting night fighter machine of a Czechoslovak pilot…

I have a lot of already built Spitfires in 1/72 scale in my display case at home; this one is the seventeenth in a row. An all-black Spitfire was in my sights for a long time, so I decided that the right time is now! This model represents a machine flown by P/O Josef Příhoda by the 111th Squadron RAF (Debden, Essex) on February 12, 1942, when he shot down a Messerschmitt Bf-109 and damaged another one. The Tamiya kit was released in 2000, but even after a quarter of a century, it can easily outdo the younger kits that appear in our scale model market. Its weakness is mainly the canopy, which I replaced with a Rob Taurus product. The variant I chose had a different propeller than the one the kit offers, so I added a spare one from the leftover parts from Airfix kits. I have also added AML seatbelts, brake hoses from lead wire and riveted the whole model. RAF roundels come from Techmod decals; the small fuselage roundel is from the remains of the Eduard 1/144 kit. I made my own airbrush masks for the code letters. For the night camouflage, I used black, black-grey and white colours from AK 3rd Generation Acrylics. Then a pure black wash was applied to panel lines and rivets. The exhausts got a thicker layer of wet-applied rusty pigments, which is supposed to represent the coating of the exhausts with a thick coat of red lead paint to stop them from glowing. I enjoyed the build, and to honour the memory of Mr Tamiya, I bought another of their 1/72 kits, which will be a pleasure to build!