Edgar Brooks

The super-critical report on the 21, February 1st 1944, was followed, 10th March, by a second, which passed the aircraft for service use. The balancing action of the rudder tab was eliminated, the gearing in the elevator trim was reduced, and a metal elevator (note this, you modellers) with rounded-off horns was fitted. Metal-covered elevators were able to be fitted by units from October 1945. Apart from that, the back end was standard XIV (unless you want to do a contra-prop 21, which is a different matter entirely.) If you start off with the PCM XIV, you start with a double advantage; as well as the ready-made fuselage, you have a pair of "proper" XIV radiators (those of the Matchbox kit are a scale 6"(ish) short), BUT this is where the fun now begins (been there, done that, but got it wrong.) Somehow, I think that Matchbox got Spitfire 22/24 drawings mixed up with those of a Seafire 47, or went to Blackpool to measure a derelict 47 sitting there. Either way, though the wings are usable, the 22/24's root fairings are badly wrong, being a scale 4"-6" (can't remember exactly) too wide at the wing trailing edges. This, when you fit the wing up to the fuselage, gives you a passable fit back as far as the mainspar, but an increasing, triangular gap between wing and root, the further back you get. I made the mistake of grafting the 22/24's roots onto the Hasegawa fuselage (all we had back then,) when I should have extended the wings' upper surfaces inwards with a triangular piece of plastic. If Matchbox did use a 47, the too-short radiators are explained by the 47's wider flaps, which didn't drop as far as Spitfire flaps, but still needed truncated radiators, and the too-wide wingroot fairings appear to have been necessary on the Seafires 46 & 47, to spread the angles of the RATO rockets, so that the efflux missed the wider tailplane. Sorry, I seem to have gone on a bit. Edgar

Sorry if you've seen this before, but the harness instructions are incorrect, since the "quick release" box was not fitted to the left shoulder strap; instead it (usually) went on the right hip/thigh strap (presumably because a pilot's right hand would naturally fall onto it.) If the pilot had to bail out, he would otherwise risk being clouted by the box flailing about, as he departed. Wartime straps were usually tan-coloured, too. Edgar

????????? Sorry, but you've lost me; that looks superb, to me. Edgar

Sorry I'm rather late on this topic, but I hope this will help. From August 1942, Supermarine abandoned cellulose paints (except on fabric surfaces,) and went over to a synthetic type, which, while remaining mat, was also smooth; there's a huge tendency to confuse smooth with semi-gloss, satin, or whatever you like to call it, but they were not the same. At around the same time, a new trade, that of Aircraft Finisher, was instituted, and it was his job to maintain the aircraft; at the same time as the new paint started to be used, the leading edges of the wings were "stopped" (filled) and smoothed, so that all rivet "divots," and panel lines vanished, back as far as the mainspar line. Standard treatment was to touch in any damage, then sand with wet-and-dry, followed by a wash-down with clear water (airframes that hadn't dried might well explain some of so-called glossy finish we see in some photos.) Paint was not supposed to be polished, because wax could cause fresh paint to refuse to stick, but that didn't stop pilots doing their own thing. Incidentally, the brass sheath, on the leading edge of a propeller blade, was not supposed to be visible, since it was normally covered by black plastic material; of course wear and tear, and flexing of the blade did cause it to show. Edgar