1:32 Supermarine Spitfire IX

Spitfires over the Middle East

The three options on this sheet lead to 1948 and 1949, when fighters of British origin found themselves on both sides of one front. Two of them belong to the 101st Squadron of the Israeli Air Force: the machine with fuselage number 2011 and a white 26 from 1949 and aircraft 2001 with a black 10 from December of the same year. The third choice is a Spitfire with the number 664 and the letter L in the colors of the Royal Egyptian Air Force from 1948.

The Israeli 101st Squadron was the very first fighter unit of the newly founded state. It put its machines together partly from wrecks found on abandoned airfields and made them up with purchases from abroad, so the equipment and finishes of the individual aircraft differed a good deal from one another. The Royal Egyptian Air Force flew Spitfires too, and so in 1948 the two sides met in the air flying the same type of fighter.

What else is on the sheet

Besides the decals, masks are included for the canopy glazing and for the Israeli markings on the vertical tail. Those consist of several colored stripes that are slow to paint with a brush, so the mask shortens the work noticeably.

The large scale puts the emphasis on the legibility of small stencils and on placing the markings exactly. Before applying them it is a good idea to polish the surface with gloss varnish and, once dry, to use a softener so that the decal follows the rivets and panel lines.

There are several kits of this type in the largest common scale and they differ in the shape of the exhausts, the canopy and the propeller blades. Before starting work it is therefore sensible to compare the model you have chosen with references for the Middle Eastern machines, because those went through modifications in local workshops and departed from the original standard in points of detail.