1/72 Twin Spitfire

Gallery Article by Ole A. Hoel on Jan 3 2015

Silly Week 2015

 

      

In the spring of 1940, the British department of aircraft production had gotten a dynamic new leader, Lord Beaverbrook. In his hurry to streamline the aircraft industry, he made some very hasty decisions to cancel all combat types not immediately ready for action. Among them was a revolutionary two engined bomber and fighter known as DH.98. Later it became the Mosquito.

In the real world this decision was reversed, and the aircraft became one of the most successful aircraft of the war, famous for low level bombing raids on pin point targets in occupied Europe. Most interesting for a Norwegian, it was used as a very effective anti-shipping type along the Norwegian west coast, eventually replacing Bristol Beaufighters in the famous Banff Strike Wing.

But, suppose that the Mosquito never was, and the RAF later found out that it needed a long range maritime strike aircraft more agile than the Beaufighter. An obvious answer was the best fighter the RAF had, the Spitfire, but that had very short legs, and the Norwegian coast was a long way away. A navigator seemed to be necessary. 

 

Click on images below to see larger images

Enter the Twin-Spit: Two fuselages means more room for petrol tanks and two cockpits makes room for the navigator, who got a more powerful radio. The armament of two 20 mm cannon and two machine guns was concentrated in the stub wing between the fuselages making for better aiming, and making room for more petrol in the outer wings. Based on the Mk. V, it also could use slipper tanks under both fuselages, so it could have a rather long range. The one weak spot would be the undercarriage, which was rather weak to begin with. Adding another engine and lots of petrol would surely have resulted in a lot of crash landings, but strengthening would have been difficult without redesigning the outer wings.

Other uses for the Twin-Spit would have been for photo-recce, and fighter bomber, maybe as a night fighter, anything the Mosquito could do, except the Bomber command work; No way it could have carried a "cookie"!

I have finished the kit in a camuflage similar to that seen on Norwegian Mossies (333 squadron) flying with strike Beaufighters against German shipping along the Norwegian coast during 1943-45 (note a small Norwegian flag at the cockpit).

The kit(s) were two old Airfix Spit Vb's, the mid wing and tail plane were made from plastic card while the slipper tanks are from Airwaves. I surmised that the tail plane between the fuselages would be enough (like on the Twin Mustang), so filled the slots for the outer tail planes and cropped the wing tips (it must have had a rather slow rate of roll).

Ole A. Hoel (Norway)

      

Photos and text © by Ole A. Hoel