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Supermarine Spiteful Mk.15 and Mk.16

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kitnut617:
Recently I've got hold of two Trumpeter 1/48 Supermarine Spitefuls.  The initial plan was to build one OOB, but that quickly went by the wayside.  I'm going to build one as a Mk.15 which had a contra-prop and the other as a Mk.16 which was said to have been the fastest British piston engined fighter ever, something like 496 mph in level flight achievable because of it's two-stage, three speed supercharger.  Some information I've read says it had the extended air intake like the type found on a Seafire Mk.47, but it seems that the standard and extended air intakes were swapped around quite a bit on all the Spiteful versions so can't really say this was how it was, but that's how I'm going to build it.

First looks at the Trumpeter kit reveal a rather nice kit, but I'm afraid it doesn't continue like that. My problem was I have an Airfix 1/48 Spitfire Mk.22/24 and their Seafire Mk.46/47 near by and I started to do some comparing.  That's when I noticed some curious things that don't look right to me, mostly around the forward fuselage.  As I said I'm going to put a contra-prop on one of the two, so I got all the spinners etc. from the FR.47 and started matching things up.  Well to start with the Spiteful's spinner is completely the wrong shape (although it looks quite good for an Martin Baker MB5), plus when I match up the Airfix kit's spinner I find it's a bit bigger in diameter that the Trumpeter one is.  But then things got worse as I looked at it more carefully ----

The engine rocker cover fairing just don't look right at all, they've got a curious curve to them in both the side view (top pic) and top view (second pic).  As the Airfix kit's have separate cover fairings I matched one up to the Spiteful's cowling, the difference is surprising.  So I filed and sanded one of the kits fairing off and then found the Airfix fairing fits fairly well, so I glued it on (third pic), you can see just how different it is from this pic.  I then repeated the exercise with the other cover fairing.

I'll buy a couple of cover fairings for the Spitfire and Seafire from Barracuda Studios to replace these I'm using here.

kitnut617:
To position the cover fairings more or less correctly, I lined the lower edge along the slot edge which is for the exhaust pipe part.

For the contra-prop I bought a Heritage Aviation Seafire FR.47 conversion, this comes with a nice set of spinners and blades, plus the extended air intake duct and is intended to convert the Airfix 1/48 Spitfire Mk.22/24 kit into a Seafire Mk.46/47.  The spinner fits the Trumpeter Spiteful quite well, but it is still slightly bigger that the kit spinner.  To get over that I'll slide in a thin piece of styrene card in between the two fuselage halves right behind the spinner. It might need a careful razor saw cut along the under cowling join line but I'll come to that once I've got further along with the build. 

For the extended air intake duct, it appears to fit quite well, all I have to do is file the curve which goes under the wing a bit because the Spiteful's wing leading edge is mounted further forward than on the Spitfire.

Daryl J.:
Will watch this build with interest.     :-* :)

Brian da Basher:
Kitnut, your projects never cease to amaze me! You achieve a level of professionalism many of us can only dream of! Your engineering is always spot-on too!

Brian da Basher

GTX_Admin:
Lots of goodness here!

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