Building the Bristol Beaufighter Mk.Ic from the Tamiya Mk.Vic kit 1/48 scale English

Airplanes

Building the Bristol Beaufighter Mk.Ic from the Tamiya Mk.Vic kit 1/48 scale

by Jaime Pastor © Modeler Site

Legal Notice

No material from Modeler Site any Web site may be copied, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, transmitted, or distributed in any way, except that you may download one copy of the materials on any single computer for your personal, non-commercial home use only, provided you keep intact all copyright and other proprietary notices. Modification of the materials or use of the materials for any other purpose is a violation of copyright and other proprietary rights.

Read More here > Legal notice

The Bristol Beaufighter was a fighting aircraft used in several fronts, but it was more active and lethal in the Pacific theatre, many of them by the Royal Australian Air Force –RAAF.

30 Squadron Beaufighters saw action mainly in New Guinea from 1942 to 1944 putting up with a hard tropical climate, extreme conditions for the machines that were visible damaged and worn out.

And something more, you should have into account that the combats were frequent and the replacement machines didn’t arrive so often as the allies would have desired.

This aircraft in particular A19-34 was delivered with the original RAF colors Dark Green, Dark Earth and Sky Type S, and in destination was designed with the J letter, covering the original marks with paint patches in Australian colors: a lighter and colourful green -Foliage Green-and a reddish earth Earth Brown- Also, it had to be repaired al least four times until up to the moment in which I wanted to represent it, just before its crash landing on March 22nd 1943. After repaired, it was repainted in Australian colors and assigned a new code LYD.

If you take into account all these details, a faded paint on the upper surfaces, many marks and rubbing over the paint, tiny chips, oil leaks and any other weathering effects is recommendable.

The kit

Only Tamiya offer several versions of the Bristol Beaufighter in 1/48 scale. Nevertheless, the only way to do the Mk.Ic is to transform and correct some minor errors starting from the Mk.IV that is the most similar. The kit itself is pretty good, there’s no significant differences with others of the same brand and scale, but the scarcely detailed cockpit and well wheels called my attention since are very visible and should be improved as much as possible.

Construction

It was necessary to thin the seats by slightly sanding. Then, I placed the backseats molded in polyester putty, the seatbelts made out of metal sheet and the PE buckles from Extratech.