Francis Gabreski was one of the USAAF's top scoring aces and went on to score more in Korea and become a successful politician in the US. He passed away only a couple of years ago and was often seen at various conventions, willing to talk about his experiences.

One of those was flying with 315 Sq, RAF after requesting an exchange posting. During the period of December 1942 to mid February 1943, he flew several operational sorties with this unit, though never scored a kill. The unit used Spit Vs for training and very early Mk IXs in operational  and some training sorties. The instruction sheet lists seven things to be watchful for when doing one of these planes, so you can have the most accurate model possible.

This sheet covers three aircraft:

PK-E as used on his first combat sortie in January 21 1943.

PK-Z as used during a 4 January training sortie

PK-K as flown during a 'Rodeo' to St. Omer on 4 Feb 1942.

All aircraft are in the standard scheme of the time. Techmod provides both canopy masks and wing leading edge ID masks for any one of the options. The markings are fitted for the Hasegawa kit though I don't see why these wouldn't fit others, and a complete set of stencil markings is also given. A full listing of all his flights while with 315 Sq is provided along with the aircraft used at that time.

The decals themselves are superbly printed and quite thin, making for a logical choice for your next project.

December 2006

Review copy courtesy of  Adalbertus, Techmod sole export representative
www.adalbertus.com.pl