1/48 TAMIYA DE HAVILLAND MOSQUITO FB MK VI

487 Squadron RNZAF January 1944

Another Favorite of mine the Mosquito or The wooden wonder. Great performing plane and a great looking one.

This example is from 487 Squadron RNZAF and on the 18^th February 1994 flew on " Operation Jericho". In it Mosquitoes of No's 21  , 464 (RAAF) and 487 (RNZAF) Squadrons bombed the Amiens prison to free French resistance fighters being held by the Gestapo.

The Build

This was my first Tamiya kit and WOW, what a joy to build, it went together with virtually no problems (the wingtips being the exception). The instructions are good and the detail in the cockpit and bomb bay is good. If this is representative of other Tamiya kits then I can see why the are around $40 AUD. But I think it is well worth the money. I bought an after market tail wheel and crew door, although the crew door was really required.

For the paints I used Gunze 309 for the green and Tamiya XF54 (Dark Sea grey) for the upper surfaces and XF 19 )for the underside. To me these colours look pretty good  representations of the the WW 2 RAF colours Dark Green, Ocean Gray and Medium Sea Grey. As I have at least 3 other RAF WW2 fighters to build I think I'll be sticking with them.

The kit was dusted in Tamiya smoke and a final coat of Gunze Flat clear and I'm very happy with the final result. I rate this my best effort yet.

Now it's been added to my Collection of WW 2 aircraft, which is taking up all the spare shelf space in the house.

Photography

These where taken with a Panasonic FZ-30 camera, with aperture at F11, the shutter speed was manually set. Lighting was 4 white energy savers with a white card as background. Images were resized with Paintshop pro XI with some minor brightness and sharpening adjustments.

The Pictures

Click on the thumbnail for a better look

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