Sword’s Spitfire Vc is a little gem that has seems to have been thoroughly overlooked. The detailing on the cockpit side-walls is exquisite and it’s a shame that little of it can be seen once the kit is built. There is enough detail in the cockpit to satisfy a lot of people, a crow bar and oxygen hose are the most noticeable missing items. For the super detailer there is an excellent base to add to. The instrument panel is just plastic with raised detail. It would have been nice to have some instrument decals included for this. (Since I built the kit a PE set has been produced, pre-painted, that provides the essentials; an instrument panel and seatbelts as well as a few other items in.) There are enough alternative parts, props, exhausts, wheels, long and short cannon barrels (resin), wide and narrow cannon blisters, in the kit to enable just about any F.Vc or LF.Vc to be modelled. Only a pair of late type elevators are missing that one of the kit’s options had fitted. End caps for clipped wings are supplied but you have to saw of the wing tips yourself. Fit of the parts is excellent including the cannon blisters, radiator and oil cooler that match the curve of the wings perfectly. The canopy is injection moulded and a prefect fit but if you want to open it to show of the cockpit you will need an after market replacement as it it a little on the thick side.
Decal options are for W/Cdr John M. Checketts AB509 J-MC; Ldr Robert Oxspring AB216 DL-Z; P/O Antoni Głowacki AB174 RF-Q 303 Sqn.; Sgt. M.Liskutin AR548 312 Sqn.
There are markings for Checketts’s AB509 with or without invasion stripes. It is this option that uses the alternative parts supplied. Not mentioned in the instructions is that this machine had late style elevators. You either have to source these form or another kit or fill the and rescribe the existing parts, not difficult to do in this scale.
303 Squadrons’s AB174 ‘QQWCA’, never knowingly been featured in kit or after-market decals before, was my reason for buying the kit. The name ‘QQWCA’ is on the decal sheet but shown as ‘QOWCA’ on the instruction sheet. The decals are correct, QOWCA being a common mistake found in model magazines and such like along with it being a Polish girl’s name. Maybe in some obscure language I am not familiar with, but in written Polish the letters Q,V and X are not used. It is in fact a satire on the vagaries of English spelling. Pronounced in English, cue-cue-wah-ka, it sounds like the Polish word kukułka, coo-coo-wah-ka, a cuckoo. Another mistake on the decals/instruction sheet is that the squadron badge is only shown on the port side of the fuselage when it was always on both sides of the fuselage. There are two badges on the decal sheet, one of which is meant for Checketts’s AB509, so that solves that problem.
AB174 was flown by P/O Antoni Głowacki during operations for Operation Jubilee (Dieppe), on the 19th August 1942. With it he claimed a share in a He 111 destroyed and a Fw 190 probably destoryed.
There is not much I can say about the kit itself. Everything including the canopy was a good fit and I do not recall having any problems with it. It looks to me to be a bit better quality then the AZ Model series of Spitfire kits. Decals were printed by Techmod and I had little problem with those either. They reacted well to Micro Sol and Set with no silvering being apparent. There was a small fissure on one of the underwing roundels over the bumps which I touched up with Vallejo Gamecolor 72.011 Gory Red which is an exact match for the Techmod’s dull red colour.
