My Spitfire factory: Seafire Mk IIc, 809 NAS, HMS Stalker, Operation Avalanche

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I've had a go at the distinctive taping/bracing/stengthening/whatever it is on the fuselage panel lines aft of the cockpit using narrow strips of aluminium kitchen foil secured in place using Klear. Looks ok I think, maybe a wee bit over scale but I'm happy enough with it.

 

Looking good. But if I were you I would use a piece of clear decal painted silver ( aluminium ). Then I would cut off strips of the correct width using a scalpel and a matal ruler. A such decal strip is of fine thickness and more flexible what results in better sticking to the model surface. Also it is possible to use the Sol and Set liquids like for all the decal markings. Actually I'm not sure if this should be done in that way at all. Just my two cents.
 

You know what, I never thought of that. I have plenty spare silvery-grey decals (early WW2 squadron codes), and it would probably have been less fiddly. But for all that, I'm pretty happy with how I've done it. If they are (as I suspect) some kind of strengthening measure they need a bit of meat on them, and they add a bit of something different to the model. Right now they're still shiny aluminium (albeit the reverse/duller side) but I think they will weather down nicely.
 
Undercarriage bits.



I have limited reference material that I'm honour-bound not to diffuse on t'internet, but the one shot showing the landing gear from the front port side, at a fair distance, suggests that MB218 had wheel hub covers and clipped fairings. The wheel hub covers are identifiable by the apparent off-centre hole (which I presume allows access to the tyre valve), bit of an oddity for a carrier plane I thought as they are intended to keep muck and dust out of the wheel, both of which are notably absent on carrier decks, but I didn't have to Google to hard to turn up loads of pics of MTO Seafires with the covers fitted, e.g.:



Source: Fleet Air Arm 880NAS Seafire IIc Red 7B MB240 taking off from its assigned carrier Feb 1943 01

The clipped fairings were a shipboard modification intended to help avoid the fairings snagging the arresting wire, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to how/to what extent they were done.

Thanks for looking in!
 
It's nice seeing these arcane facts brought out. It preserves, for want of a better term, the reality of history. We all love history here and so many times we've all read a caption "not the actual thing but close enough". It's not the same. Facts revealed and then used in a museum quality build gives me the ability to "walk around" the actual historical plane. I love the work done here.
 
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