The very best Spitfire model is in my eyes still the grand old Realair Spitfire IX/XIV combo pack, it must be getting close to 10 years old.. It looks right, great VC, flies great and covers a variety of IX sub models (normal and pointed rudder, normal and short wings) it has a very easy to use paintkit with more or less perfect texture mapping (compared to all the problems I encountered with the newer Hurricane).
I have covered the two Norwegian Spitfire squadrons and their IX’s in detail before with both war and post war paints, but the arrival of the last volume of the outstanding and sort of bible of Norwegian Spitfire reference, “the Spitfire Saga-Volume V” which covers the period from November 1943 to the summer of 44 with the preparations for and actual invasion of France, D-day. The North Weald wing evolved into the 132 (Norwegian) wing as a part of the 2nd TAF and moved to the field base Bognor Regis AGL in March 1944 in preparation to support the invasion. The last volume includes (as previous) many hundreds of never before seen pictures of both men and machines. Very interesting to get more pictures of how the Norwegian spitfires were looking on D-day itself.
The story of the D-day stripes tend to be forgotten when we paint them on models, for most squadrons they were applied in the day before or on the night before the invasion and they were very crude looking being applied freehand with an ordinary paint brush. So the straight lines we have been painting are simply not like how the stripes looked on most aircraft.
For 132 wing it was a back and forth show which started on the night of 3rd of June when the first order to paint on invasion stripes arrived. But in the morning next day a new order arrived which told the ground crews to remove them! On the evening the wing was once again told to paint on the invasion stripes on all aircraft for operations the next day. The 5th of June arrived, but no invasion. The Norwegians did not want to remove the paint for a second time so camouflage nets were put over the aircraft. We all know that the 6th of June would go down in history as “the days of days”. 132 wing provided air cover over the beaches from the early morning to the late evening.
Over to the actual paint, the book has some good pictures of the aircraft of 332 Sqn commander, major Werner Christie which flew NH171 “AH-Z” for 3 sorties on D-day. The 3rd sortie was cut short when the engine quited after take off and he bellied in on Bognor Regis ALG. The pictures show a very crudely painted invasion stripes which covers up most of the serial and sqn code. The code has been reapplied below the cockpit in white. I have tried to replicate the crude invasion stripes and all of the RAF roundels and other decals have been remade.
Some of you might remember my RAF Mustang repaints for the warbirdsim model, Werner Christie would later become wing commander of the Hunsdon wing flying the Mustang IV ending the war as an ace with 11 kills.
