1/48 Classic Airframes Savoia Marchetti 
 SM79 bis Torpedo Bomber

by Graham Tarran on Aug 24 2003

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Here’s the Classic Airframes SM79 torpedo bomber, built as a bis variant, one of two possible from the box, the other being an sil.  All SM79’s could carry torpedoes but the bis was the dedicated torpedo version & incorporated armour, armament & other improvements for the hazardous attacks against allied shipping in the Med. Effective & popular with it’s crews, the SM79 served with the ANR in the torpedo bomber role until the end of the war & continued with the Italian Air Force post war as a transport until the early 1950’s.

First impression upon opening the box is “wow, this is a large kit!”  Main airframe, undercarriage & torpedo are injection moulded.  The majority of the other parts are resin with a few etched metal on a small fret.  These latter included a dozen or so cockpit levers but I substituted stretched sprue with a blob of PVA for these components.

The bis did not feature the ventral gondola & blanking off parts are included to fill the void although copious amounts of filler were also needed to blend them in & obtain a flat fuselage underside.

I opted to open the dorsal gun position.  I did this primarily because I read somewhere that this was always open on the bis & that in fact the retractable “turtle-back” was usually removed.  Looking at photos after I had accomplished the required sawing & sanding, I am unable to confirm whether my particular example was so fitted or indeed whether it was generally the case.  Anyway, I wish now that I hadn’t as I am convinced that I have exposed a lot of missing/incorrect detail. 

All resin components were first sprayed with Humbrol No. 1 primer.  The interior was painted with a 2:1 mix of RAF interior green & white (some internet discussions point to the fact that light grey was also used on the real SM79) & after detail painting, it was installed within the fuselage.

The wing is awkward but not impossibly so.  I attached the lower wing centre section, followed by the upper wings & finally the lower outer wings.  Gaps resulted at the roots, which were filled with a combination of plasticard & filler without too much grief.

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I also drilled the fuselage just behind the main glazing & upper wings to accept the bracing wires that are evident on the SM79.  Position of the wing attachment involved a little guesswork – mine are fairly forward (as shown in the cover illustration of the Squadron “SM79 in Action” publication) whereas other illustrations show it further aft.  The tail bracing points were also drilled out.

The engines are resin on large casting blocks.  Remove the entire block & ensure that the rear of the engines are perfectly flat as any variation will result in incorrect positioning once mounted to the model.

The metal fret includes armoured covers for the lateral gunners positions along with associated “wind deflectors”.  Once all was assembled & filled as required & the collector rings had been hand painted bronze & masked, the transparencies were masked off & the whole airframe sprayed with Aeromaster acrylic Verde Mimetico which went on beautifully.  Being matt, I then sprayed on Humbrol glosscoat to accept the decals, which are also superb quality, followed by Humbrol mattcoat.

Undercarriage is a simple affair with good detail to the wheels.  I drilled out the axle holes of the wheels & attachment points on the main legs & inserted wire axles.  Prior to attaching what would be the roof of each undercarriage bay, I had drilled out the locating holes for the actuating linkages.  It was while mounting the undercarriage that the port wheel well roof came adrift.  I was horrified as it is designed to be fitted “from the top” before the upper wing is added.  With a little lateral thinking, I managed to coax it out from within the bay & drilled a small hole in it.  I then threaded through a length of monofilament & secured it with CA glue.  I pushed the roof back in, applied a decent amount of CA to the join & used the monofilament to “pull” it down into the bay.  Finally, the monofilament was cut off.  Phew!

Two torpedoes could be carried but impaired performance.  Thus, the SM79 was usually armed with a single torpedo mounted to port.  CA provide mountings in resin for port & starboard & I fitted both, painting them Xtracolour steel.  It is here that the only components not offered in the box are required, namely, four lengths of 1mm wire.  I have no idea about colours for WW2 Italian torpedoes & painted the warhead in Humbrol aluminium Metalcoat with the rest matt black.  Torpedo props were painted bronze.

For me, the most awkward feature of this kit was the front engine long “Wellington” style flame dampened exhaust.  Three identical resin exhausts are provided & those for port & starboard simply lie flat alongside the nacelles. However, on the real thing, the front exhaust is obviously “bent” to allow for the wider curvature of the fuselage at this point.  I tried heating & bending the resin components but resorted to breaking it into three pieces & adding each individually to flow around the curve; gaps were filled with tiny amounts of filler. I was initially happy with the result but a little upset to find that although on the real thing, the exhaust terminates outside of the torpedo, mine does so inside & by quite a margin.  Too late to fix that! 

Props comprise resin hubs with injected blades.  I drilled out the attachment points on each hub & inserted the blades, using a simple paper jig to get correct orientation in each case.

The tail braces were added from monofilament; wing braces & antenna are stretched sprue, as I wanted to be able to use the old heated pin trick to pull them taught over their relatively long length.

Final details are the undercarriage doors, resin guns (with prominent flash hiders), masts, underwing mass balances & hinges & electrical generator unit on the starboard fuselage wall adjacent to the cockpit.  I modified the exposed upper gun mounting to bring it further forward into the gunner’s position & added a short length of cartridge belt (from the spares box).  Finished!

I realise that many modellers wouldn’t touch anything classified as “limited run” or showing the phrase “modelling experience required” with a barge pole, and I used to be one of them, building anything from the WW2 era “Tamigawa” catalogue.  There were no special skills or tools used here that any such modeller wouldn’t already possess.  Cost however is a major factor & at £40 here in the UK this is not a cheap kit, and with the Trumpeter offering coming in at £10 cheaper, many modellers wanting an SM79 will no doubt go down that road.  Also & to be frank, I feel that Classic Airframes could be a little more helpful with their instructions, pointing out possible pit-falls & important considerations & not leave so much for the modeller to guess, deduce or simply screw up; I can’t believe that this would involve too much trouble or additional expense for them. 
 
Where to put it?  God only knows!  However, He’d better impart His divine wisdom to me as I have ordered another sil/bis (to build as a sil) model & hopefully managed to track down the earlier Spanish Civil War boxing.  So the kids won’t eat for a while & “’er indoors” will have to make do with last years fashions! (What am I saying?…..She earns more than I do!)

Graham

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Photos and text © by  Graham Tarran