1:24 Spitfire Mk I

The oldest form of the Spitfire

The Mark I entered squadron service in 1938 and as the only version it lived through the whole course of the Battle of Britain from the start. The early examples had a two-blade wooden propeller of fixed pitch and a flat windscreen with no armored pane; both changed within two years, so the machines of the summer of 1940 already carried a three-blade variable-pitch propeller, thicker glass at the front and eight machine guns in the wing complemented by an armor plate behind the pilot.

The glazing matches this early generation and it differs from the later versions in small things that are nevertheless clearly perceptible in one twenty-fourth: a differently divided side strip, a different transition of the fixed rear part into the spine and a different width of the upper strip of the sliding section. A stencil cut for a later mark would fit here only roughly, and on a model of that size it shows at once.

Overview of the contents

The sheet holds two matching sets, one for covering the clear areas while the top coat is sprayed and the other for painting the frames from the inner side. The four stencils of national insignia are intended for the roundels. On a model this large the diameter of a marking is considerable and any waviness in a decal would be impossible to miss, whereas a sprayed area stays flat and passes into the paint with no step.

If you are building a machine from the summer of 1940, reckon with the fact that at that time examples with and without an armored pane on the windscreen occurred side by side, and the shape of the windscreen was adapted to it. Depending on the subject chosen, the width of the upper edge you will be masking may therefore differ. The model and the paints do not belong with the stencils; they are bought separately.