G’day Folk’s,
This unusual and unknown Mosquito B IV is based on the Tamiya B IV kit in 48 scale married to the old Paragon highball set for the Airfix kit. This model was first built some years ago and has spent sometime on loan to both a shop for display and a museum, sadly it was damaged and is now under restoration. The flarings needed modification to fit the Tamiya fuselage, but the highball tub fitted without any problems. The cockpit interior is the Verlinden set for this kit, which needed a large amount of material removed to fit into the tamiya kit, it also has rather long and thick harnesses for both pilot and navigator/observer.
60 of the B IV Mosquito’s were modified to carry highball which was a junior version of the Barnes Wallis bouncing bomb carried by 617 Sqn Lancaster’s of the famous ‘dam busting’ raid. These mines were intended to bounce across the surface of the water in a predictable fashion, leaping over torpedo nets, striking the side of the target and using it’s resiual spining energy to crawl underwater untill it detonated.
618 Squdron was formed in 1943, with the task of using this weapon, but lack of German target’s drew a temperary setback, 24 of these aircraft were sent to Australia to be used against Japanese shipping, but the war draw to a close in that region.
Rob.