Just finished this beast. The plastic went together fairley well, the PE parts were often to long or placement holes where an issue, what I’m comming to expect from Trumpeter. Over all happy but not extactic about the final product considering i pick it up off the net cheaper than the Tamiya 48 would of cost local.
Most of the pics I have for stringbags show little weathering except for the cockpits, so except for the weathering I’ve applied to the cockpit on this one I’m not sure how much further I’ll go.
Some of the pics are a bit grainy, I dont think i had my camera on optimal setting and couldnt find the mount connection for my tripod, but overall I think you get the picture (pun intended)
Andrew
very nice Build Andrew [Y].
Regards, Rick
Looks good Andrew. And I suppose at 1/32 it must be a fairly large model - good thing you folded the wings to save some shelf space!
Great looking string bag! I would’nt add a thing to it its perfect as is!
Trey
Nice Job! I can’t believe Swordfishes sunk a battleship!
Nice name too.
Very nice…I’ve got a 1:72 scale Swordfish kit in a box…When I get around to it I’ll give it a go…and if I can come up with a result anywhere close to that I’ll be happy.
Peter
Thankyou all for the kind replies
Vance, while I currentley have the shelf space to of built her wings out, I had never built a plane with wings folder before so I selected to do it for that reason.
Peter, I started off doing a 1/72 scale swordfish with scratch built cockpit but had an accident trying to fix some fuselage warping. I was also given the opportunity to choose my B’day at about the same time so I figured Hell Yeah and chose this LOL.
Andrew
Nicely done, from what I can see… The wings hide a lot… Too bad it’s not built “spread”, but it was your call, like you said… I just like the Stringbag to look like she’s ready to fly…
It was the only combat biplane to serve throughout the entire war, and I got one I won off Ebay on the way, an old SMER kit in 1/48 scale (7.99 shipped) that I can’t wait to get into… It’s the floatplane version, but I got some strut material and a spare wheels box that’ll take care of that… Wanna do a Stringbag as she woulda looked on D-Day, plinking German positions behind Sword Beach with rockets…
…
A 'fish with rockets?? I had no idea!
Oh yeah!.. “Cleaverfish”, I believe the crews called it…
Letting loose a salvo of wing-mounted rockets from a fabric-skinned a/c… wouldn’t that have some potential to damage the wings?
Apparently not… The launch plume wasn’t all THAT big anyway on those rockets, and the exhaust nozzle was about what? 8-10 inches from the wing-surface with the rail between it and exhaust?.. Plus (and I’m just spit-ballin’ here) if it was a factor, they’d probably fix a shield of some sort to the wing’s undersides, similar to the blast shields used on the B-25s with the 50-cal gun-packages. I dunno for sure though, haven’t seen any pictures of a rocket-armed 'Fish’s wing undersides… Would be logical though…
Here’s the SMER kit I won:
hThat’ll look sharp with the rockets & stripes, although I don’t mind the look of it with floats either. I’m sure you’ll ave fun with it either way!
Well, building the strange and unusual kits are my thing sometimes, since I myself am strange and unusual…
Build what you know buddy! [:D]
You two guys should start a show LOL
As for Stringbags and rockets…
From the MKII onwards (and probably retrofitted to MKI’s modified for rockets) The underside of the wings where the rocket pylons were, were metal skinned. As for the use of the rockets, they were primarily used for U-boat attacks. Several were sunk or damaged in this way (which were then sank by allied ships). I had no idea about the invasion stripes, looks great.
Andrew
Oohh… Careful with that joke, now… It’s an antique…
[:P]