1/48 Tamiya Bristol Beaufighter Mk.IIF

Gallery Article by David Mielke - "VMFA314Knights" on Sept 22 2016

 

      

1/48 Tamiya Bristol Beaufighter Mk.IIF (Converted from Mk.VI)

Part of my growing collection of 1/48th WWII "Canadian Aces" aircraft now includes this RCAF Beaufighter IIF Night-Fighter of 406 Squadron. I had originally intended to build a 409 Squadron Beaufighter KP-N that I had some reference on however, after rooting around the Internet, I discovered that "Moose" Fumerton and Pat Bing scored 406 Sqn first night "kill" in Beaufighter R2336 and decided to make the switch to modelling their aircraft instead... except I was lacking reference to the probable aircraft letter or any photos of this aircraft. Thanks to ARC members Tom and RCAFFAN (among others) plus a lot more research, I was able to get reasonable information on the Fumerton / Bing aircraft and continue the project. Included in my reference was an account by Fumerton found in 'All the Fine Young Eagles' by David Bashow, which states "On the night of 1 September 1941, I took off from Acklington in Beaufighter 'J', with radar operator Sgt. Pat Bing, for a night test. Not too long after that, we were scrambled and given a height and course to steer for the interception of a bandit."..... 

Click on images below to see larger images

The project would start with Tamiya's beautiful 1/48 Beaufighter Mk. VI in addition to the Czech Master's Merlin Engine Conversion to render a IIF version. I hadn't done a major conversion in a while and putting the chop to the wonderfully engineered Tamiya kit is a bit nerve-racking however nothing ventured... Let me tell you there are some BIG holes left in those Tamiya wings during conversion and getting everything lined up and smoothed out is a bit of a challenge (not to mention a huge increase in construction time)... Eventually I got all the parts mated and with the help of liberal amounts of filler and sanding I finally had the Merlins in place. Now to replace the tail and other minor parts, custom build a Beam Approach Antenna and move onto the paint shop.

Subtle weathering was applied during painting by varying the shade of black during spraying. I would use decals for the "Type C" fuselage roundels only and all other markings were custom cut and sprayed using paint masks produced by my new Silhouette Portrait plotter cutter as there are no decals for this aircraft (that I know of... someone usually produces them a year or so after I do it the hard way. :)

At some point I misread my reference material and much to my disbelief, when I stumbled into the realization just before I sprayed the gloss-coat for decals... after all my research I had applied the incorrect aircraft letter code... somehow I put a letter "L" instead of the "J" that I had intended... send this Beau back to the paint shop for some quick repair and let's just move on. 

After I got that little gaffe corrected it was time to stumble upon the next... the Czech Master exhausts weren't the correct type for my 406 Sqn. Beaufighter and neither were the kit's... I was beginning to think that I hadn't been staring at those reference photos all those months... or maybe I had seen too many? Regardless, off with the Czech Master versions and onto custom building a more suitable exhaust for my Beau... and then back to the paint shop (will this project ever get to the display shelf?!)

The kit was further weathered with panel washes and dry paint exhaust streaks for a "used" look. (hard to see with the all black finish in these photos however the subtle shading looks much better than a plain black coat of paint. After everything, I am very pleased with the final result and I have bought another 1/48 Tamiya Beaufighter along with some Aviaeology Decals to do a RCAF Mk.VI version in the future. 

Keep on Modelling, 

David Mielke

Photos and text © by David Mielke