1:32 Supermarine Spitfire Mk.V Aces over Africa and Malta

The island that would not give in

Malta lay exactly on the supply route between Italy and the African coast, and it therefore became one of the most fiercely bombed places of the war. The fighter defense of the island rested for a long time on obsolete machines; the turn came only with the delivery of Spitfire Mk.V aircraft, which aircraft carriers brought there in 1942 and from which they took off straight for the flight in. A few hundred kilometers to the south, meanwhile, the fighting in the desert was going on, where the same machines covered the ground units.

What the sheet offers

The markings cover machines of the Mk.VB and Mk.VC versions with their serial numbers, personal codes and unit markings. Among the names given with the individual options you will find pilots with a high number of victories and wing leaders. Each option comes with the version, the serial number of the machine and the rank and surname of the pilot.

Practical notes

The sheet is printed for 1:32 scale, where the decals are large and easy to handle, but where at the same time they will ruthlessly show up every unevenness beneath them. A gloss varnish under a decal is therefore a necessity, not a recommendation. Once dry it is oversprayed with a matte or semi-gloss top coat so that the carrier film disappears.

Neither a kit nor paints are part of the package. A Spitfire committed in the southern areas mostly carried a bulky dust filter under the nose, so it pays to check whether the chosen pattern matches the machine selected. The letter codes on the sides of the fuselage moreover shifted between individual machines according to the position of the national insignia, so it is advisable to settle them in place from a photograph of the particular subject.