1:72 Spitfire Mk.V

Spitfire Mk.V cockpit glazing, 1:72 scale

A clear replacement canopy for the most numerous early version of the Spitfire. The bulged shape of the main part matches the standard the type carried through the years 1941 to 1943, when it bore the brunt of the fighting over the English Channel and over the Mediterranean.

The most widespread early Spitfire

The Mk.V came about as a quick solution: a stronger Merlin 45 engine was fitted into the airframe of the previous versions, and the result became the most numerously built variant of the whole early line. The Vb sub-version combined two twenty-millimeter cannons with four machine guns, while the Vc version received the so-called universal wing, which allowed either armament arrangement. Machines deployed in North Africa and over Malta carried a conspicuous bulky filter under the nose that protected the engine from sand. This is the version that saw both superiority and heavy losses after the German Focke-Wulfs appeared.

Painting and sheen

Glass looks most convincing when it has a different degree of sheen than the flat surfaces around it. Once the camouflage is finished, take the masks off and run a thin coat of gloss clear varnish over the transparent parts. A flat surface on the glass looks false and from a distance gives away that one is looking at a model, not at a photograph of the real machine.

Recommended for

• Modelers building British mid-war fighters
• Completing a missing part on a build in progress
• Builds of machines from the fighting over Malta and Africa
• Collections tracing the development of a single type

The set does not replace the whole kit, only its transparent part.