Supermarine Spitfire Mk.Vc
"Overseas Jockeys”

Special Hobby, 1/48 scale

Reviewed by David Couche

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Late in 1940, the RAF predicted that the advent of the pressurised Junkers Ju 86P bomber series over Britain would be the start of a new sustained high altitude bombing offensive by the Luftwaffe, in which case development was put in hand for a pressurised version of the Spitfire, with a new version of the Merlin (the Mk VI). It would take some time to develop the new fighter and an emergency stop-gap measure was needed as soon as possible: this was the Mk V.

The basic Mk V was a Mk I with the Merlin 45 series engine. This engine delivered 1,440 hp (1,074 kW) at take-off, and incorporated a new single-speed single-stage supercharger design. Improvements to the carburettor also allowed the Spitfire to use zero gravity manoeuvres without any problems with fuel flow. Several Mk I and Mk II airframes were converted to Mk V standard by Supermarine and started equipping fighter units from early 1941. The majority of the Mk Vs were built at Castle Bromwich.

The Vc also introduced the Type C or "Universal" wing along with the revised main undercarriage; the tops of these wings featured large, bulged fairings to provide clearance for the ammunition feed motors of two Hispano cannon. Later, because two cannon were seldom fitted, these fairings were later reduced in size to more streamlined shapes. A deeper radiator fairing was fitted under the starboard wing and a larger oil cooler with a deeper, kinked air outlet was fitted underneath the port wing. In addition, more armour plating was added, protecting the bottom of the pilot's seat and the wing ammunition boxes.

Supermarine produced 6487 Mk V’s of which  2476 were Mk.Vc’s with 300 of these being the tropical version.

Special Hobby’s Spitfire Mk.Vc "Overseas Jockeys” is a reissue of their original 2008 Mk.Vc kit but with new parts added and a new series of schemes.  This kit contains 8 shiny, grey styrene sprues (3 large and 5 small) containing 105 parts of which 17 are not used with this kit, 1 clear sprue, a sheet of photoetched brass parts, 3 resin cast parts and new decals. A colour instruction booklet guides the build through eleven steps with a separate coloured painting and decaling guide with colour call outs from the Gunze range, both Aqueous and Mr. Color.

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Thumbnail panels:

Sprue A

This sprue consists of the fuselage halves, the majority of cockpit details, rudder and the engine chin panel. Moulding is of a high quality, with small sprue gates and very little flash evident. Typical of the short run kits, there are no locating pins on any of the parts, so alignment is likely to challenge you in the build. Panel lines are finely and evenly recessed, with excellent finer details representing the Druze fittings around the engine panels and smaller access panels. The instrument panel is on this sprue and it has been moulded with fine raised detail with a decal to give you the instruments. There is some minor flash on a number of the parts but most parts have mould seams on them, possibly a sign of aging and well used moulds.

Sprue B

Sprue B offers you the wings. A one piece lower wing with a high degree of fine detail moulded into it. The upper wings sections are well detailed and again, the actual moulding displays very few flaws. Also on this sprue are the ailerons, which are moulded separately, giving you some artistic arrangement options.

There is a set of exhausts on here but none of the 2 options of injected moulded ones are used but replaced by resin parts.

Sprue C

This sprue contains in main, the undercarriage components, tail planes, underwing oil coolers and radiators as well as carburettor intakes. Also supplied are 4 different sets of covers for the cannon bays, 2 which you won’t use and can go into the spares box, with you having to make a choice of covers from the other 2 depending on which scheme you chose. Of note, is that the outer wheel halves are moulded such that you can use an option of different wheel hubs, 4 spoked or 5 spoked, but all 5 aircraft here use the 5 spoked hubs.

Sprue D

This small sprue has the parts to make up the Rotol propeller unit with the spinner being the longer and more pointed one with the wide blades. Each blade is a separate parts and needs to be assembled. This prop unit is for schemes C/D/E.

Sprue E

Another small sprue, holding the propeller, hub and spinner for the de Havilland constant speed unit, with the shorter rounded spinner. The prop is a one piece mould in this case and is used on schemes A and B.

Sprue F

A small sprue consisting of the 2 wing tips only.

Sprue G

A small sprue consisting of the 2 parts for Vokes tropical intake used on schemes B and D.

Sprue H

A set of three different slipper tanks makes up this sprue. The slipper tanks mainly used for the Mk.5’s were the shorter ones, so the long centre tank is consigned to the spares box.

Sprue K

This is the clear sprue. The canopy is only supplied as a 3 part canopy but is well moulded and very clear. This may cause some issues to some modellers.

Also on this sprue are a number of lights and external mirrors.

Resin Parts

This kit also has 5 finely cast resin parts to complement it. Firstly, there is a nice Aboukir dust filter to be used in Scheme E. Then there are 2 sets of exhausts, a set of fishtail exhausts and the early 3 section round section exhaust. Both set are beautifully cast with hollowed ends and good detail. Both are worthy replacements for the injected moulded parts. Well done Special Hobby!

Photoetched Fret

There are 20 etched parts on the sheet. Of these, 8 make up the seat belt set, 2 parts for the carburettor intake screen used in the C Scheme and a few other incidental cockpit details.

Decals and Instructions

Special Hobby have lifted the quality of their instruction sheets over the past year or so. Printed on slightly smaller than A4 size sheets of glossy paper, the contain crisp, clear and where appropriate coloured drawings of the construction stages, in this case 11 of them. This is followed up by 5 pages of coloured profiles and decaling instructions for the 5 schemes, which I must say, offer a good range of schemes including desert, Euro day and RAAF Pacific.

The decal sheet has 5 sets of markings in a gloss finish that appear in excellent register, printed by Cartograf, so you know they will be good to use.

The 5 schemes are;

• Spitfire Mk.Vc, AB174 / RF-Q, 303 Polish Sqn RAF, RAF Kirton-In-Lindsey, Aug 1942.

• Spitfire Mk.Vc,  BS295 / CR-C, No.1 Fighter Wing RAAF, Strauss, Australia, 1943.

• Spitfire Mk.Vc, Serial Not Known. 5FS, 52 FG, USAAFE, Corsica, Autumn 1943.

• Spitfire Mk.Vc,  AR524 / White 5, GC 1/7 French Air Force, Tunisia, Early 1944.

• Spitfire Mk.Vc,  MH592 / G, 1st FS National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia.

The final page of the instructions is a detailed data stencil layout, which the decal sheets has on it.

In conclusion, this kit adds to the possible Spitfire Mk.Vc schemes that can be made and certainly looks as if it will build into an excellent well detailed model with a little TLC by the average modeller. Highly recommended to lovers of Spitfires and those looking for something a bit different to the multitude of RAF Spitfires schemes.

Thanks to Special Hobby for the review sample.

Review Text & Images Copyright © 2019 by David Couche
Page Created 2 July, 2019
Last updated 2 July, 2019

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