This is the Spitfire Vc overtrees, obtained on eBay for $24.00.
This is going to be Spitfire Vc BR301 of 249 Squadron RAF, which may be the top-scoring Malta Spitfire, flown by several aces in the summer in 1942, including George "Screwball" Buerling for the majority of his 15 victories in July 1942.
BR301 was one of the Spitfire Vc's brought by USS Wasp on her second Malta resupply mission in early May, 1943. As such, it is generally suspected she is one of the "Blue Spitfires." As with all the others, exactly how that was done, since the RAF at Malta completely failed in their duty to record everything for posterity - and modelers - due to their completely selfish concern with fighting a daily war for survival - is at best edumacated guesses.
Research done by Ron Lowry that was published in Robert Bracken's great "Spitfire: the Canadians" has BR301 in an overall blue scheme of Azure Blue lowers, and a light and dark blue uppers, painted over the desert scheme of Dark Earth and Middle Stone, with the rudder unpainted and the serial having been masked off, which reveals the desert scheme background. This repaint may have been done aboard Wasp, using paint available on the ship.
Nobody really knows if that is right, any more than they can be sure of any of the other Blue Spitfires, but it is an educated guess based on research.
I think Lowry is 80% right. But I then bring my own first-hand knowledge of how the US Navy does "quick and dirty."
I agree that the Blue Spitfires were likely done aboard Wasp. They had a week from taking the airplanes aboard in the UK to getting to the launch position in the Mediterranean, which gives the time to do so that would not have been available on Malta in the midst of a daily fight for survival. What I think would have been done is that the Navy Medium Blue paint that would have been available for maintenance of the carrier's air group was not a huge supply, so it would have been "stretched" - thinned - and probably thin enough that it barely covered the color scheme beneath, and it was done quickly by people with paint brushes. No neat spray jobs. Thus, the "dark" and "light" blue upper scheme is the thinned blue paint over the Dark Earth and Middle Stone.
Is this definitively right? Unknown. But it fits the operational situation and conditions under which the work would have been done.
So, now that the kit is assembled, the work is in the painting. What will be done is a desert scheme. These airplanes were painted in the UK, most likely after coming off the production line, where they were painted in the basic Day Fighter Scheme, since their ultimate destination was unknown. Whether that was stripped off and they were completely repainted in the desert scheme is unknown, but probably unlikely as a waste of time back then. They were likely done in the "A Scheme" and spraypainted, so it would have not been exactly what had been done in the factory paint shop. They might have had the stenciling applied, unlike the way these repaints were done at Aboukir, or perhaps they were done exactly the same way. I'm going to assume the stenciling was there, then overpainted on the ship, with some showing through the thinned paint. So after I do the desert scheme, I will then apply stenciling. Then I will apply Navy Medium Blue, thinned about 40 (paint)-60 (thinner) or maybe even a bit more. Once it's applied with the airbrush unevenly, I'll go over it with a paintbrush dipped in more-thinned paint, to get the "not neatly done" finish.
You may note that the model has been assembled in accordance with the notes included in Eduard's "Eagle's Call" instructions for their Malta Spit option. The airplanes arrived on Malta carrying four 20mm cannon as a way of getting spares there. Many - not all but apparently most - of the Vc's had the inner cannons removed, as well as the four .303 machine guns to save weight (as an aside, the fact they were worried about saving weight is an argument that the original factory paint was not removed, but overpainted; by the time they got to Malta, they might have had over 100 pounds of paint on them, which would also argue for very thinned blue paint for weight saving). So the wing looks like an "e" wing; Malta's experience might have had something to do with the ultimate change of the cannon to the outer position in later Spitfires. I also used the "square" cannon cover rather than the teardrop, mostly just because that makes for visual difference with other "C" wing Spitfires, but it also might have been done with 4-cannon Spitfire C wing airplanes.
So, now on to the paint shop. I'll finish with the decals from "Spitfire: Aces of the Empire" for BR301.
5 attached images. Click to enlarge.
