Aeromaster Sheet 48-042
1/48 Spitfire V Collection
Price: $5.00
I'll
admit it right now. Generally, British WW2 aircraft in the Dark
Green/Ocean Grey over Medium Grey paint scheme bore me to death. I find them
uncolorful and so buy very few kits. For this reason, I have not rushed
out to buy the latest Tamiya Mosquito or Hasegawa Typhoon.
However, I am a real sucker for a sale. When I saw the Hasegawa 1/48 Spit V on sale for $10.00, I just had to have it. As nice as the decals are in that kit, I just had to have something different. This led me on a search for a good decal sheet. I was hoping to find a 1/48 Carpena sheet like thier 1/72 version that had some truly super schemes, but was unable to find it.
Next best was this early Aeromaster sheet on various Spitfire Vs, most of them Vbs. Two of them are RAF Polish Squadrons and four of them are in the dreaded Dark Green/Ocean Grey over Medium Grey scheme, but at least three of them are not RAF so caught my interest.
OK, so what's on the sheet? The first one is an often done Vb of 303 Sq. Ho Hum. Next is a more interesting Vb from 302 Sq with white nose markings. I believe these are from the disasterous Dieppe raid. The white bands are not part of the sheet and will need painted on. Next is a Vc of the SAAF in Dark Earth /Mid-Stone over Azure blue. Very interesting, but where to get that butt-ugly filter as one is not included in the Hasegawa kit.
Moving on down the instruction sheet (which, by the way, is not in color as this
is an early sheet), is a Vb from the Portugese AF. This is undoubtedly one
that got 'lost' on it's way to Gibralter and landed in British-friendly
Portugal. I don't know if Britain supplied Spit Vs to Portugal. Maybe a
reader can enlighten me on this. Anyway, it isn't RAF so has possiblities. The
final scheme on the sheet is a Vc from the Royal Egyptian AF. In European
camoflage and again with that horrid air filter, but very interesting markings.
One would have thought these would be in desert camo. Can anyone
tell if these ever flew without that filter?
There you have it. Five schemes, with some of them quite interesting. All tail bands are included and so are the orange centers to add to the RAF roundels. Only one set of RAF roundels is included, as is pretty standard practice with Aeromaster as they don't think that modelers will use every marking on a sheet.
As a thought to that, I can only think of one sheet where I have eventually used all the markings given, so that is pretty sound business practice. Of course, that doesn't count those sheets that only offer one scheme!