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Spitfire IX

History

In September of 1941 the German Luftwaffe introduced the FW-190 to the western skies of Europe. The new FW-190 was superior to British fighters, most disturbingly to the Mk.V Spitfire. RAF losses rose rapidly and losses were serious enough for the RAF to cease daytime operations in November 1941.

In June of 1942 a German fighter pilot mistakenly landed his 190 on a British airfield. Comparative tests began immediately. The mock encounters confirmed that the chances of a British fighter surviving an encounter with an Fw-190 were slim and none. The only RAF fighter deemed suitable to oppose the FW-190 were the Spitfires Mk.VII and Mk.III. Both aircraft were powered by the Merlin 61 engine.

But there was another way to get a more powerful Spitfire and that was to mate the Merlin 61 engine with The Spitfire Mk. V airframe. This aircraft became the Mk.IX. Now the RAF had a fighter that could challenge the FW-190. The Mk.IX became the second most numerous version of the Spitfire with 5653 examples built.

The Kit

The Eduard Spitfire Mk.IX Weekend kit is made up of 5 sprues, a small decal sheet, and a 12 page instruction guide.

Construction

Construction began with the cockpit which took a lot of time to build because of all the fiddly little parts. Cockpit detail is Ok, but once the model is assembled, the only part of the cockpit detail you can see is the seat.

Two steps in the build were troublesome, attaching the fuselage to the wings, and building and installing the exhaust stacks. Attaching the fuselage to the wings required quite a bit of sanding to get a proper fit. Building the exhaust stacks was a disaster. Eduard has provided a very complicated method of building and installing the exhaust stacks. I could not get them to fit. Fortunately the kit provided a second pair of stacks which I installed instead of the called out stacks. The rest of the kit went together without any major problems.

Painting

I did not have the colors that were called out in the paint guide, so I used colors that closely matched the colors on the box art photo. The underside of the model was painted with MM Dark Ghost Gray. The camouflage pattern on the top side of the model were painted with MM RLM 76 and MM Dark Green. The band at the end of the fuselage and the prop spinner were painted with MM RLM 75. The yellow stripes on the leading edges of the wings and the tips of the prop blades were painted with MM Insignia yellow. The cockpit interior was painted with MM Interior green.

Decals

The kit provided a small decal sheet with the markings for the CO of B Flight, No. 312 (Czechoslovak) Squadron, F/Lt Otto Smik. The decals for the Mk. IX Spitfire were excellent. They were easily applied and adhered well to the model. However, there were no stencil decals. The kit is an Eduard Weekend Edition, but I think they should have provided stencil decals.

Conclusion

I was not very pleased with this kit. It was an Eduard Weekend Edition―a long weekend, or maybe you work on it just on weekends. The parts fit was good and the detail was also good. However, I found this kit to be over engineered and unnecessarily complicated. Additionally, I think it shoddy of Eduard not to provide stencil decals. Even with the problems and the complicated building, the model turned out rather well.

One last comment, it never ceases to amaze me how small WWII fighters were as compared to modern jets.