1:72 de Havilland Mosquito NF.XII/XIII/XVII/XIX Night Fighters

Night hunters with radar in the nose

The four versions on this sheet show nicely how quickly airborne radar matured during the war. The NF.XII machines were produced by converting older night aircraft: the centimetric AI Mk.VIII set fitted into a shortened nose and the machine guns had to give way, so the armament stayed at four 20 mm cannons. The NF.XIII was already the production counterpart of the same solution, built on the airframe of the fighter-bomber with the universal wing.

The NF.XVII version received the American SCR-720 set, which the British listed as the AI Mk.X, while the NF.XIX had a nose shaped to take both the British and the American aerial. The crews of these wooden twin-engine machines kept watch over the British Isles, escorted bomber streams deep over Germany and in the summer of 1944 joined the hunt for V-1 flying bombs.

What the sheet brings the modeler

This is a printed sheet of waterslide decals for 1:72 scale, intended for plastic night Mosquitos. The printing has firm registration and a thin carrier film, so the finished marking leaves no visible step or frame on the surface.

Work through the motifs one at a time. Soak a cut-out piece for a few seconds, let it rest for a while on paper and only then slide it into place. The surface must be smooth and polished to a gloss, or air will be trapped under the film and the marking will go white once dry. A final matte clear coat hides the edges perfectly and unifies them with the camouflage around them. Do not hurry on to the next motif until the previous one has settled properly; work spread over two sessions turns out better every time.