The 13th carrier group was perhaps the most obsolete of any FAA carrier group in June 1950, still equipped with 12 Seafire 47s of 800 Squadron and 12 Fairey Firefly FR.1s of WW2 vintage. In fact, photos show that some of the Fireflies still carried World War II camouflage! Nevertheless, the air group became crucially important over the next two and a half months, providing air support to the outnumbered UN forces in the Korean peninsula in the face of the all-out North Korean invasion. The strike made with the Valley Forge air group against Pyongyang on July 3-4, a week after the outbreak of war, was perhaps the most important mission flown in the entire war, since the surprise appearance of American and British aircraft where they were not expected caused Stalin to cancel his decision to provide full air support for the North Koreans; had he done so, the war would have been over by mid August, with forcible reunification of the peninsula by the North and the UN forces forced to evacuate.

This is the Special Hobby kit, which provides decals for four different Air Group 13 Fireflies, including one of the WW2-marked aircraft. The kit is well-researched.

It's a Special Hobby limited-run kit, with all that means. Lots of test fitting three times before gluing once, putty and filler over all joints and seams. However, the Special Hobby Firefly series (FR.1 FR. IV, FR. 5, AS.6-7) are very accurate (certainly far moreso than the collection of scrap plastic masquerading as "Fireflyish" released by Trumpeter which is wrong in so many ways there's not room here to list them all). This one will be done with the Barracuda Studios vacuform canopies. Those are advertised as fitting the Grand Phoenix and AZ kits, but they also fit the Special Hobby kits and really improve things.

Photos here are initial assembly through puttying and filling the assembled model. Also a photo of Air Group 13 aircraft aboard HMS Triumph.

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Fairey Firefly, now that's what I call an excellent alliteration. Great addition to this group build.

More progress. The putty and Mr. Surfacer sanded down, then the vacuform rear canopy installed and the vacuform windshield in the front cockpit. Had to apply some Tamiya putty and then Mr. Surfacer to the area immediately behind the rear canopy to smooth out an "edge" that appeared.

Ready to mask and take to the paint shop.

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Painted, using my mixed Tamiya colors for Extra Dark Sea Grey, Dark Slate Grey and Sky. Going to use the one good thing from the godawful Trumpeter kit, the decals for the black/white ID stripes. If for some reason they screw up, then it becomes a 1770 Squadron airplane in the Far Eastern Fleet, fall 1944.

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Thanks for the Future tip, Tom @tcinla!
Camo looks great!

Looks quite good, and painted stripes are always better than any decal. Too bad Trumpeter has so many wasted models in their prolific catalogue.

Finally - decals!

I used the kit decals for the underwing serials, the fuselage serials, the plane-in-group number, and the carrier designator. These were thin and I had to really finagle to get one of the "3" decals that was in pieces over the gear doors and around the gear well to work. The decals were thin and I found the stripes showed through the upper wing marking, plus the other national markings were a bit small, so I used standard-size roundels and fin flash from other decal sheets. Overall, I think it's starting to look good.

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Finished, other than adding rockets.

4 attached images. Click to enlarge.