Avro Lancaster B Mk. I W4964/WS-J "Johnnie Walker", No. 9 Sqn. RAF, HKM 1/48

[Vic Balshaw]

This is going to be a gold star build.

 

[36feet10inches]

This is going to be a gold star build.

Yikes! Pressure's on now!

 

[Airframes]

Really looking forward to this - it might motivate me to get to work on my Tamiya version, and the "bombing up" diorama I've been planning for some years. Lots of work needed to correct and detail the kit, and lots of space required for the display base, hence my lack of progress !

 

[36feet10inches]

Well, hello there!

 

[Wurger]

 

[Vic Balshaw]

I've got me starting gun out.

 

[36feet10inches]

I've got me starting gun out.

Just as long as you're aware that this will be a marathon rather than a sprint!

 

[Crimea_River]

So it should be done in under 3 hours then. GREAT!

 

[36feet10inches]

Well, here's a sprue shot, kind of... I think if I took every sprue out of every bag I wouldn't have enough floor space. It's a monster! Inside the box there's a rather nice poster print of the box artwork.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Vic Balshaw]

That is a huge kit and OH what fun your going to have.

 

[Crimea_River]

Lotsa nice plastic. Looking forward to the start.

 

[HP52]

This is a build I've had in mind for a couple of years now, albeit I'm going to be doing it in a form very different to how I initially envisaged it.

There's a bit of background to this. A while back I bought the Revell 1/72 Lanc, the one with the striking yellow-finned bomber on the box, and that was the scheme I originally intended to do. However my imagination was caught by the other OOB scheme, W4964/WS-J with its distinctive Johnnie Walker whisky nose art, as flown by No. 9 Squadron from RAF Bardney. "J-Johnny" was one of the few "ton-up Lancs", returning from over a hundred missions unscathed. I then found that the aircraft has its very own exhaustively researched and hugely detailed biography in Gordon Thorburn's Luck of a Lancaster:

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Amazon product ASIN B00FOGG2HU
View: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Luck-Lancaster-operations-killed-action-ebook/dp/B00FOGG2HU/
I managed to get hold of a second-hand (ex-library, actually) copy and read it from cover to cover in a few days. I'll go into the story of J-Johnny in more detail in the course of the build, but suffice to say that I was captivated by this particular Lanc (I wasn't aware at the time that I'd actually seen a part of the aircraft in my local air museum many times – more on that later!) Deciding I wanted to do her and the brave airmen who crewed her justice within my modest abilities, I switched to the new-tool Airfix kit, which apparently is a more faithful representation, particularly where wing dihedral is concerned; I don't normally care about these things too much, but as I say I wanted to do the best I could with this one. I got hold of the appropriate decal sheet from Kitsworld (much better printed than the Revell decals, it has to be said), and it's sat in my stash ever since.

Recently I've jumped scales from 1/72 to 1/48 and have gone back to my first love, the Supermarine Spitfire, and have been enjoying working in this aging-eyesight-friendly scale. Then I read about the release of a new 1/48 scale Lanc kit by Hong Kong Models, coming in at an eye-watering hundred quid plus, but this is a special one, right? So while I've not yet worked out where I'll put the thing, that's what I've decided to build.

At present I have the kit on back-order, and am in no desperate rush to get started, but with that saying about a journey of a thousand steps in mind I've decided to get a thread started. This build will probably take a good while, in that I'm going to do bits of it when I feel like taking a bit of time off the Spits rather than doing a one-push build. I feel it's one that's worth taking my time over.


Thanks for looking in.

Tony

Thanks for a good read. I'm a child of 463 Sqn. I haven't built a model in years but I an seriously looking at a Lanc to build. My Dad was on 463 Squadron and was pretty cut up with their losses. He was Engineering Officer and at the end of his life still was very cut up by their losses. "Germans, bloody murdering bastards!" he yelled once, near his end. I am guessing 463 and 9 Squadrons were both 5 Group . Best Wishes - Geoff