1/48 Hasegawa Hawker Hurricane IIC

[Hamiltonian]

People here have been nice enough to help me with answers to various questions about this aircraft over the years, so I thought you'd be relieved to know I've finished it.
It's LB545 "D", 135 Sq. RAF, operating out of Minneriya, Ceylon in August 1944. To a large extent a reconstruction, since I have no photographs, and had to piece together the appropriate markings from information about this squadron before and after it was stationed in Ceylon.
It includes an Aires cockpit, a Squadron canopy, Red Roo tropical filter, Quickboost drop tanks, and some mystery control surfaces and wheels I found loose in the kit box I bought from eBay.

Thanks for the help and advice over what I think has been a couple of years, and of course the cock-ups are all mine.

 

[Airframes]

Very nicely done.
Are you certain about the red spinner ?
This colour was 'shunned' by units in the theater, as it could be confused with Japanese markings. One particular Squadron, arriving from the MTO, were warned about their red spinners, and decided to ignore the warning. After a couple of instances of 'friendly fire', they very quickly changed the colour of their aircraft's spinners !

 

[Hamiltonian]

Are you certain about the red spinner ?

Not certain, no.
It's a "retrodiction" from documentation that 135 were using red bosses for "A" flight and blue bosses for "B" flight when they started flying the Thunderbolt I, later in 1944. I think I got that from Geoff Thomas's "Royal Air Force Thunderbolts" (Air Research Publications). I'll see if I can track it down. (And the Thunderbolt bosses were admittedly much smaller than a Hurricane spinner.)

 

[Airframes]

Good stuff.
The few colour pics of 135 Sqn Thunderbolts do show at least one with a dark red prop boss, and others with them in bare metal.
It's possible that their Hurricanes had red spinners, but, considering the above comments, and the fact that the Squadron had been in the theater so long, it's more likely that they were either black, or the pale blue of the SEAC roundel.
Either way, the model looks good, and I wish I'd been able to get that kit (since acquired !) when I did the build for the niece of Bob Cross, highest-scoring RAF pilot in SEAC, with 136 Sqn. I had to use, and try to improve, the old 1960's vintage Monogram kit !

 

[Hamiltonian]

Thanks for the kind comments.
Here's what I went on.
Geoff Thomas's book, previously mentioned: "The airscrew bosses of 135 Sqn's Thunderbolts were painted in Flight colours; A Flight - red, B Flight - blue," He includes the famous flypast photo of 135 at Chittagong in late 1944, which shows some sort of coloured bosses, and he captions the image by suggesting that the two nearest aircraft, "A" and "D", are painted in flight colours, red:

(My father had this picture in his newspaper clipping file, annotated with the names of the pilots of the three airborne aircraft,)

I also have a picture of a stripped-down 135 Sq. Hurricane from what is evidently the early days of conversion to SEAC roundels and flashes, which seems to have a coloured (rather than white or black) spinner, from Bryan Philpott's "RAF Combat Units: SEAC 1941-45":

I think that's all the evidence I had to suggest that 135 were doing something unusual with their spinners.
But I've never been sure about either the spinner colour or the letter format / positions.

 

[fubar57]

 

[fubar57]

One more....

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....nice job on your model by the way

 

[Gnomey]

Lovely work!

 

[Airframes]

The pics Geo posted suggest, by their tonal values, that the Hurricane spinners were probably (weathered) black.
The pic of the Thunderbolts is a B&W reproduction of the original colour photo, with the nearest aircraft having the dark red prop boss, and the next in line having a bare metal prop boss ( just shows how B&W contrast can play tricks !)
By the time the Squadron converted to the Thunderbolt, which took some time, and they still used Hurricanes during transition, the presumed 'problem' of having any red markings was probably less of an issue, especially with the very small area of P-47 prop boss, compared to the much larger spinner of a Hurricane.
That said, without definitive proof, who knows ?

 

[Wayne Little]

Nicely done..!

 

[Hamiltonian]

The pic of the Thunderbolts is a B&W reproduction of the original colour photo, with the nearest aircraft having the dark red prop boss, and the next in line having a bare metal prop boss ( just shows how B&W contrast can play tricks !)

Ah, I've seen the coloured version of that photo on-line, and (without looking closely) assumed it was was one of those hand-tinted versions of a B&W original!

I will probably require a short grieving period before I repaint the red spinner ...