It’s a hobby post this week, as with all the excitement of my recent release, I don’t have a whole lot interesting to say work-wise! I’ve got a recently built MkV Spitfire kit from Kovozavody Prostejov manufacturer in the colour scheme for the North Africa Theatre of Operations.
I’ve always really liked these desert camouflage colours, and have wanted to make a model in this scheme for a while, so I interrupted my Malta Spitfire binge to do this one, consoling myself with the fact that Spitfires in this colour scheme were shipped to Malta, albeit to be repainted before operations as the colours weren’t suitable for combat over water.
A couple of interesting points to this model are the clipped wing tips, which helped increase the roll rate for the plane, making it a bit more maneuverable, and the Aboukir air filter (the air intake under the plane’s chin), which was fitted to the planes by maintenance units in theatre. They differ from the bigger Vokes filters which these planes often had fitted (which you can see on my last Malta Spit, the plane’s chin, essentially – https://www.duncanmhamilton.com/plastic-paint-and-glue-malta-spitfire-mkvb/). The Vokes filter caused a bit of a drop in engine performance, so the Aboukir installed design went some way to improving on that.
This was a really nice kit to build, and I’ve got a couple more stashed away for my Malta list. For the purists out there, I realise the Azure Blue unders are in a shade a bit too dark. This is quite a hard colour to find an accurate representation of across the manufacturers, but I’ve since settled on a more accurate match for the real thing, which I’ll use going forward.
Despite this error in detail, I’m really happy with how this one turned out, and it really stands out from the other planes in my growing collection of Spitfires!
On to the photos:
I hope you like this one! I’ll be heading back to Malta for my next one, and hope to get some wargames minis back into the production line too! Until next week, take care!