Supermarine Spiteful Mk.15 and Mk.16

[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!

[kitnut617]

Thanks guys ---

Brian, one day I'll just build a model OOB, not this year or even next year but  --- 

Anyway, been doing a bit of reading --- the Spiteful Mk.14 was powered by the Griffon 61, the Mk.15 powered by either a Griffon 89 or 90 and the Mk.16 was powered by a Griffon 101, which seems to go along with what Spitfires and Seafires were powered by (except the 101 but I'm sure I'll discover that was installed in a Spitfire at some point).  The fuselage fronts are very close to being the same for all types using the same engine mounting brackets too, plus the cowling underside being the same with the standard and extended air intake being swapped around on all versions (there's some photos which show this). So the rocker cover fairings should be the same throughout ---

I was curious to why the Spitefuls wing was positioned where it is, the leading edge lines up about the center of the fifth exhaust stub as it comes out of the engine, whereas the Spitfires wing leading edge starts about 6" (RW) behind the sixth exhaust stub (last one to the rear).  I was thinking about it last night just before I dropped off to sleep and this morning when I woke up I think I have the answer (sub-conscious problem solving), I've read somewhere that both the Spitfire's and Spiteful's wings are single spar, the difference is where the spar is.  The Spiteful has a laminar flow wing similar to a P-51 and the u/c is mounted in front of the spar and folds away in front of the spar, the Spitfire's u/c is mounted behind the spar and so folds away behind it too (top pic). By looking at the panel lines on the wings you can determine where the spars are and the Spiteful's is more to the middle of the wing even though the chord lengths for both types of wing are about the same. But the spars attach to the fuselages in the same position ----- 

This discovery has created another problem ---  I've got another project to fix 
Many years ago I wanted a Spiteful in 1/72 scale but at that time I had no idea what was available (even if one was available).  I had got from my wife one of the best books I've ever got, The Complete Book of Fighters by Green and Swansborough. There is a photo of the first Spiteful which was basically a Spitfire Mk.XIV with the new wing, which I thought was an easy conversion to do, a Mk.XIV with an Attacker wing. So I built one (second/third pic), but now I've realized I built it wrong. The wing is in the wrong position as all I did was mount it where the Spitefire wing fitted, so I'll have to correct it (I'll probably just build another one    )

[kitnut617]

Here's a pic of the spinners, the Trumpeter Spiteful one is on the right (top pic).  Next pic is of the Heritage Aviation bits & pieces

[jcf]

Spiteful/Seafang photo gallery:

http://s1025.beta.photobucket.com/user/joanblaue/library/SPITEFUL%20and%20SEAFANGS

He also posted some of Seafang photos in a thread on Hyperscale:
http://www.network54.com/Forum/149674/message/1351622410/SEAFANG+Mk+31+VG471%2C+walkaround....

[kitnut617]

Spiteful/Seafang photo gallery:

http://s1025.beta.photobucket.com/user/joanblaue/library/SPITEFUL%20and%20SEAFANGS

He also posted some of Seafang photos in a thread on Hyperscale:
http://www.network54.com/Forum/149674/message/1351622410/SEAFANG+Mk+31+VG471%2C+walkaround....

The first link doesn't work Jon, but that's a nice bunch of pics in the other link, thanks for adding these.

[jcf]

Hmm, that's odd as it opens up to his photobucket gallery just fine on my iPad and iMac.

Ah, I see PB has added a beta in there to link to their 'new look' site, which looks like crap BTW.

Try this:
http://s1025.photobucket.com/albums/joanblaue/SPITEFUL%20and%20SEAFANGS

[kitnut617]

No, didn't work again Jon, I get a message saying "We're sorry, we didn't find the page you requested"

[Brian da Basher]

Sometimes Photobucket is up and down. That last link just opened for me ok.

You know, even if that build of yours is "wrong" I like it anyway. Maybe if you think of it as a pre-prototype you'll feel better about it Kitnut? To my eyes it certainly has a very tenacious look!

While I can't cite any sources, I think you're correct about Spitfire vs. Spiteful wings. I doubt I'm as well read as you, but what you said certainly sounded familiar.

I really like the prop. I picked up a couple of Me-109G props recently for scale-o-rama purposes but I'm dreading lining up the blades.

Thanks for keeping us in the loop. I know this project is going to be worth following every minute!

Brian da Basher

[GTX_Admin]

Hmm, that's odd as it opens up to his photobucket gallery just fine on my iPad and iMac.

Ah, I see PB has added a beta in there to link to their 'new look' site, which looks like crap BTW.

Try this:
http://s1025.photobucket.com/albums/joanblaue/SPITEFUL%20and%20SEAFANGS

This one doesn't work for me, though the original one did...

[kitnut617]

A bit of progress today, as there's not a lot to do to the wings I got them glued together, and then I glued the cockpit tub together too.  Now I can do a bit of trial fitting of parts and here's how it's going.  Top two pics are as you get it in the box but it's not going to look like that.  The bottom two pics is how it will be, as the Mk.F.15.

[kitnut617]

But that's not all, I made the contra-prop work --- well if you rotate the front prop the rear one rotates in the opposite direction by itself.

I made a little gear box which fits neatly inside the engine compartment (top two pics).  The bottom pic shows a couple of differential gear sets that the RC crowd will recognize quite quickly.  One set is quite large and I got it to experiment with, the small set is what I'll probably go with on some other projects I have planned.  I decided to practice on this Spiteful and it's worked out quite well and now I might just do the Airfix Seafire FR.47 I have the same way.

I have to thank Jeff for the inspiration on this as he very kindly loaned me three different contra-prop assemblies which have parts to make the props contra-rotate and after studying them, I thought about going this way as the bits are easily acquired.

[GTX_Admin]

Great detail work.

[Brian da Basher]

That's some very serious modeling and engineering to boot!

Nice progress, kitnut! I'm already looking forward to more!

Brian da Basher