1/48 Tamiya Mosquito FB MK. VI 418 Squadron (Lou Luma) FINISHED
The Mosquito, "the wooden wonder" was quite remarkable. For starters, it may be the first recorded use of epoxy which binded the balsa and birch wood together. I also learned that it was such a pain in the rear to the Germans that they took special measures to combat it, one being the development of the TA 154 "Moskito" and the modification of some He 219's. I recall that some Luftwaffe units, perhaps JG 300, started striping the paint off their Bf 109's for extra speed to catch the blistering fast Mossies. I think I even read somewhere that the Luftwaffe considered a Mosquito kill a double score due to the difficulty in that endeavor, which was mostly positioning and luck. Herman Goring said this in 1943 (hilarious):
"In 1940 I could at least fly as far as Glasgow in most of my aircraft, but not now! It makes me furious when I see the Mosquito. I turn green and yellow with envy. The British, who can afford aluminium better than we can, knock together a beautiful wooden aircraft that every piano factory over there is building, and they give it a speed which they have now increased yet again. What do you make of that? There is nothing the British do not have. They have the geniuses and we have the nincompoops. After the war is over I'm going to buy a British radio set - then at least I'll own something that has always worked. "
History would show that Goering was the real "Ninocompoop", but that's another story. I'll be doing 418 Squadron (RCAF) James "Lou" Luma's "Moonbeam McSwine". Luma was the only American Mosquito ace with 5 kills from January to March of 1944. Luma said this about his first kill, an ME 410 ace:
The night of 21/22 January 1944, 1st Lt. James 'Lou' Luma (USAAF) scores the first of five victories with 418 Squadron RCAF. Luma encountered an Me 410 twenty miles S.W. of Wunstorf : "We did a quick orbit to port, coming behind him and chasing him for about 15-20 miles. We were on his tail and gave him a 2-3 second burst of cannon and m.g. from about 250-100 yards. Strikes on the fuselage were followed by a ball of fire which enabled us to identify E/A as a 410. A large piece broke off to the left and he went down."
Anyways, its high time I build this one again. It will get Ultracast seats, wheels, and I grabbed the Master metal gun barrels. I picked up a set of Montex paint masks too.
I started with the cockpit, which is fairly nice. After a coat of XF-1 flat black, I made my own custom RAF interior green color with Tamiya paints, namely XF-71 cockpit green and a touch of XF-19 Sky grey. No big whoop.
I added individual dial decals from Aeroscale. I'm starting to prefer these over Photoetch, particularly on Tamiya kits with their blank dials.
Here's the Ultracast seats, which are an improvement.
The assembly was put together. The detail is very nice. You can get really carried away in here if you like (wires and stuff), but I figured that since the glass is closed it wouldn't be seen and would be pointless. I removed the kit 303 barrels and drilled out the guns to accept the metal ones later on.
The bomb bay is nice too. I wasn't sure if Luma was strictly a fighter pilot or if he did bombing missons as well. I figured I'd add them for the heck of it as I'd hate to hide all that detail in there.
I'll be closing it up soon..