I have just put the finishing touches on my latest build, the Vickers Wellington Mk. III in 1/48 scale from Trumpeter.

The Wellington was the back-bone of the Royal Air Force's Bomber Command during the early days of the Second World War until supplanted by the four-engine heavy Avro Lancaster.  The Wellington remained in production throughout the war and served in a variety of roles once it left front-line Bomber Command service.  Its crews gave it a nick-name inspired by a famous cartoon character of the time - Wimpy of the Popeye comics.

I chose not to do a WIP on this build but I did take WIP photos (at least until I grew bored with the build and decided to just get her finished).  I will post those pictures at the end of this thread.

The kit is one that I have had in my stash for a few years.  Trumpeter kits have a reputation as hit-or-miss.  This one is perhaps a Texas-league single.  It has some fit problems that are mostly related to the ridiculously thick photo-etch included with the kit. Now I freely admit that I made some mistakes on this kit, and it could well be that others have been better able to fit everything properly.  Once I got to the photo-etch, I seemed to be constantly fighting to achieve a half-way decent looking fit.  I will let y'all determine whether I achieved that or not.

The photo-etch parts are the wheel bay walls, with mounting tabs that extend outside the nacelles for the gear doors.  The detail is really good on these parts, but with everything buttoned up, most of that detail is not visible.  The kit includes metal landing gear with rubber tires.  When I got to that point, I recalled the old AMT-ERTL F7F that was notorious for the rubber tires melting plastic parts so to mitigate this possibility I covered the wheels with a generous coating of Future to prevent the rubber tires from actually touching plastic.

The fuselage, as with some many other Trumpeter kits, is crammed full of details that may or may not be accurate.  It was difficult to find good photos of the Wimpy's interior outside of the cockpit, so I cannot state whether the detail is accurate or not.  It does look good up until the point that you put the fuselage halves together; after that none of the detail is visible at all.  This version of the Wellington has very few windows to see even a smidge of the detail through.  Oh well.  At some point I decided that certain parts were not going to be visible, but would be better served to reside in my spares box rather than unseen inside the Wimpy.

On to the completed build photographs.

I did not do very much weathering on this build. Just a little exhaust staining that was accomplished with ground up gray pastels rubbed onto the underside of the wings along the nacelles.

The Wimpy was known for the geodetic construction of the fuselage, wings, stabilizers and rudder.  Trumpeter has been criticized for over-doing the geodetic structures but I really don't see a problem with it.  From what little I was able to find regarding the interior, I found that the interior was lined with doped linen that was then painted a dark red color.  I have attempted to replicate that look, and this is partially visible through the amidships gunner station windows.

The cockpit/bomb-bay structure builds into a single piece.  I replicated wood graining on some of the bulkheads, radio and navigator's tables, but unfortunately this is not visible at all.  Wasted effort on my part, except to remind myself how to paint the wood graining.  I did that with a base coat of tan, followed by a coating with oil-based raw umber paint streaked with a wide fan brush to replicate the graining. 

I built this OOB but added a set of Eduard seat belts in the cockpit and other (not visible) seats.  I also used canopy masks designed for this kit and added EZ Line for the antenna rigging.

Paint was Tamiya flat black + Model Master Dark Green + Model Master Dark Earth, as well as additional colors from Tamiya and Model Master metallics.