75 years after the Allied invasion that turned the tide of the war, we take a look at two of Operation Overlord's most pivotal British aircraft.
Aircraft: Supermarine Spitfire Mk. XIVc, Hawker Typhoon Mk. Ib
Brand: Academy
Scale: 1:72
Price: £24.99
Rating: 4/5
Part 1: The Spitfire
The Supermarine Spitfire. Although a common opinion, the Spitfire still holds a firm place as one of my favourite aircraft of all time, and a Spitfire kit always manages to be a pleasure to build; this Academy tooling has proven to be no different. In fact, out of the kits I have built (the Mk. Ia by Airfix and the Mk. Vb by Revell) this XIV variant has proven to be my favourite so far.
A cozy cockpit, one of the less fiddly ones I’ve put together.
The kit has wonderful fitting and excellent detail from a 1/72 scale model, though not to the extent that it overcomplicates the build. It even gives you the option to have the aircraft’s cockpit door as open or closed!
While the kit includes invasion stripes as pre-made decals for both the Spitfire and the Typhoon, I decided against using them in favour of hand-painting them. There is a historical reason for this - as a reflection of the secrecy of the invasion, Allied aircrews were only informed to mark up their planes in the famous stripes mere days before D-Day, and there are several photographs of Spitfires that show the stripes with rough, uneven edges. For this reason, I also decided to hand-paint the invasion stripes on the Typhoon, which I will get to later on.
A Spitfire Mk XIVc (like the variant included in the kit) with evidently rushed invasion stripes that were probably painted on days, or even just hours before D-Day. This image is actually included in the highly informative D-Day booklet provided with the kit.
There‘s honestly not too much more to say about the build, other than to commend its excellent quality and detail, especially for its scale. The only real issue I faced when building this Spitfire was the bizarre idea of making each propeller blade an individual piece - as the propeller blades each have a slanted orientation it was incredibly confusing to try and align them correctly! This is one particular issue that Airfix handles correctly by having all propeller blades joined on one mould. Strangely enough, the Hawker Typhoon’s propellers are all included as one mould - so why did the Spitfire have to be different? I guess no kit can be perfect, because otherwise this Spitfire came incredibly close.
My dad’s older Spitfire Mk. XIX model provided a helping hand with aligning the propeller blades correctly.
In conclusion, besides the strange propeller blades this Spitfire came together like a dream. By far one of the better kits I’ve made, and it honestly left me wanting to build another Spitfire afterwards - there’s certainly not many kits that have left me wanting more after spending so much time on them in this way!
Individual rating: 4.5/5
Part 2: The Typhoon
Not unlike the smooth build that was the Spitfire, the Typhoon was an incredibly smooth build. The pieces fitted together wonderfully and I was almost ready to call the Typhoon one of my best builds yet...
...almost.
Nothing can be perfect, I suppose, and the Typhoon was no exception to this rule. Everything had been painted and marked out ready for decals, and most of them went on perfectly as they should; however, there was a major problem.
Lots of decal setter was needed for this one.
Due to an inconveniently placed raised surface on the Typhoon’s fuselage, the decals simply refused to set into place. I tried many countermeasure, including Decalfix and even creating small holes, but to no avail the decals just seemed to be getting worse.
Ghastly, isn’t it?
I had come to realise that the state of this decal was going to make or break the final model, and I was desperate to fix it. I resorted to asking around on online forums and communities to see if I could get some advice to save this Typhoon - many said to cut parts of the decal off or remove it entirely, and others recommended me products I had already tried or had no access to. Cutting off parts of the decal was the last thing I wanted to do.
But that’s exactly what I did.
A little better.
Cutting decals is an issue I’ve had to deal with several times before, on both a Sea Fury and a Gloster Meteor. However, I’ve never had to cut a decal in this more precise manner and I was expecting disastrous results. Replacing the raised and overly creased parts of the decal with Japanese Navy grey paint was one of my more intense model building moments, knowing every moment that a slight mishap could ruin the model I’ve put so much effort into. Nonetheless, I seemed to get it done to a good standard, as long as you didn't look too closely.
I still wasn’t too happy with the look of the model, and the painted parts of the decal stood out like a sore thumb, to me at least. I left the Typhoon to dry for the night, waiting to see if maybe it would look better in the morning.
Not too shabby after all!
After the tension of the build I do have to say I’m glad with the final quality of the model. While the painted decal issue still bothers me slightly, I like to think it could have been far worse.
Individual Rating: 3/5
Conclusion
To wrap up the review, I have to say the Academy Spitfire and Typhoon were generally a joy to build! Sadly, both are set back from being 5-star builds as they each had one major problem I had to deal with, but I’ll be fair and call them frustrations at most.
So for the Spitfire, beware of the bizarre propeller blades and watch out for the decal placement if you plan to build the Typhoon - but if you manage to deal with these oddities better than I did, you‘re in for a treat. The fitting is some of the best I’ve seen in a model, as is the detailing and even the decal quality; I’ve seen some disagreement regarding this, but I had no problem with the decal quality itself!
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