1/72 Hasegawa Spitfire IXc

Israel's First Spitfire

by Craig Sargent

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Israel's first Spitfire, a MkIXc coded D.130, was a bit of a 1:1 scale kitbash. It involved parts from no less than 3 different airframes; one was an Egyption aircraft shot down by Israeli forces, and the other two were salvaged from an RAF parts dump after the withdrawal of British forces.

Hasegawa's kit has to be one of the better Spitfires in 1/72, and the easiest to build. This kit was built almost out of the box. Changes to accurately represent D.130 were:

  • the removal of the wing top wheel bulges

  • filling of the outboard gun ports and ejector chutes

  • removal  of the outboard cannons from the wing leading edge

Simple tape seatbelts were added to the kit seat, and the kit gunsight reflector was sanded and polished to a scale thickness. The cockpit was painted and assembled and the rest of the model was built following the instructions. I left off the main wheels, propeller and spinner, and exhausts till after painting and decalling was completed.

Click on images below to see larger images

 

The model was preshaded with flat black, using my trusty Aztec A470, including a rough anti-glare panel (which can be faintly seen under the paint in photos). The reference I used, and all research I came across, stated that the aircraft was painted in "very patchy dark green primer" similar to RAF Dark Green, but with a touch more olive in it. I use Gunze acrylics as my paint of choice when airbrushing. The whole model was misted with Gunze dark green and then various panels were hit with different greens to get the look as patchy as possible. Control surfaces picked out in a lighter shade of green.

 

The photos I had showed some bare metal parts on the airframe (radio hatch, main wheel hubs, tail wheel, radio mast and gun access panels), and these were masked off and airbrushed with Tamiya enamel silver. Then, the port wingroot was given a very patchy application of the same silver using a paintbrush. I couldn't make out any exhaust staining in the photos so elected not to add any.

 

 

The decals are from a company called HQDecal and are beautiful to work with. D.130 had all markings crudely applied using white chalk, and the decals represent this very well. Looking at the photos, it appears some of the decals are slightly underscale (and don't ask me what the smaller ones say, but they are correct).

 

The model was sealed with Gunze gloss varnish and given a wash with a mix of 5% Paynes Grey oil paint, 5% Raw Umber oil paint and 90% turps, before being given a final matt coat. I used some Tamiya silver enamel on a fine brush to add some paint chips.

 

Final additions were to paint the tires, the prop and spinner, and the exhausts, and add them to the kit. The spinner and props looked very clean in the photos, so I applied a small amount of chipping to the spinner only.

 

All in all a very different looking Spitfire, and a nice addition to my IAF models.

 

Reference

  • Spitfire - Star of Israel by Alex Yofe and Malcolm Laird, Ventura Publishing, 1996. ISBN 0958359407

Craig

 

Click on images below to see larger images

Photos and text © by Craig Sargent