Operation Starkey…1/48 Westland Whirlwind Mk.I, RAF
Built in 2016. Trumpeter kit with decals from the CA kit. Regarding the a/c number, the 8 has to be exchanged with a 9. Added the missing gunsight from the sparesbox and used a plastic rod for the missing headrest support strut.
The Classic Airframes decals were a bit brittle and partly little pieces came off before sealing so some repainting was done. EZ Line for the aerials, painted with Gunze and Tamiya acrylics.
Model shows an a/c that was used during the hoax invasion in Operation Starkey August/September 1943.
btw, either P6974 was recoded at some point or a wrong code was copied over and over by artists and manufacturers. There´s a pic which shows P6974 coded with HE-M, but all profiles and decals you see are coded HE-Z
Great build, Reinhard!
This is one of my favorite airplanes. Very interesting paint scheme, had never seen this before.
Beautiful! I need to get that kit. I have a thing for late-war, high performance, twin engine aircraft, and that's one of them. The old AMT Grumman F7F is a decent kit that can be improved relatively easily. But my holy grail is a 1/48 Mitsubishi Ki-83. I've been waiting a long time for that.
Looks great with those "invasion" markings! Nicely done.
Beauty model of a gorgeous plane.
Nice invasion/identification stripes!
Fantastic build, Reinhard.
An incredible aircraft which arrived a little to late to see action.
Beautiful paintwork.
Nice work on a less-than-stellar kit to obtain a stellar result.
Myself, I await the Special Hobby release of a 1/32 Whirlwind next month is great anticipation.
Nice work, Reinhard.
Good looking build.
Really nice job on this. I did the Whirlwind back in 1996 from the BAP resin copy of the Cooper kit. Photo evidence, as you show, seems to show HEZ may not really be the correct codes for P6293, or was it re-coded? For many years profiles and history of this aircraft said it participated in the Dieppe operation. Available research today shows no evidence of Whirlwinds operating at Dieppe.
2 attached images. Click to enlarge.
🙂 ... Greetings ... 🙂 :
A very fitting rendition of a Whirlwind, Reinhard ... not much seen.
Nice modeling, thank you for sharing the pictures.
That's your usual excellent model, Reinhard!
Congratulations! I love the result!
Very nice. The Whirlwind is one of my fave looking Brit fails (not every plane can be a Spitfire.)
A really good looking plane and you've done a good job on this rarely built kit, definitely liked.