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1/48 Tamiya Lancaster. RAF Squadron 101


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Hi Chuck,

Did your relations Lanc' have those 'CIGAR' aerials fitted ??

tall thin things !

ian.

Thanks Guys!

After 65 years since the war, my Uncle's memory of specific features of the Lanc they flew is vague- and understandably so. Pressed on the possible ABC features of their aircraft, my uncle remembers nothing about it as "special" and the fact that the pic he took (below) does not have the ABC chin aerial and the fact that he does remember that having the "eighth man" was a rare event, makes me believe that their Lanc was not an ABC aircraft. Maybe they flew an ABC Lanc a few times or maybe their ABC operator, Bob Hoffstetter, only came along for a few sorties for whatever reason. We'll never know for sure.

Based on the pic below, it's code letter is "V" and being from Squadron 101, we know that the full code must have been SR-V. It could also have been SR-V2, but I would think the "2" would reside on the chin along with the "V" if it was, so I'm sticking with SR-V. Thanks to your buddies over on the Lancaster Archive forum, the only aircraft in 101 that had SR-V on them had the following fate (very unlucky code!):

DV194 missing 16/3/44

DV291 swung on take off 22/11/43

DV308 missing 2/1/43

ED375 missing 23/3/43

ED660 missing 26/5/43

ED697 missing 9/7/43

LL779 missing 21/7/44

PA237 missing 24/2/45

PB258 missing 13/8/44

PB457 caught fire 3/2/45

PB673 SOC 3/11/45

RA597 SOC 25/3/45

Since my uncle was still flying in May of 1945, this makes PB673 the only serial number that matches, so I guess I'm going with that serial number unless someone steers me elsewhere. This aircraft is not ABC equipped. Make sense?

BTW, what does "SOC" mean?

VirginVicky.jpg

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SOC = Struck Off Charge. Meaning the aircraft was written off. Probably crashed, or was damaged such that fixing it would've cost too much. USN still uses similar parlance. A strike means the a/c is striken from the records.

HTH

-Peter

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I reckon your safe to just put the two standard whip aerials on the fuselage

as in the picture i posted.

Alot of Lanc's were also SOC when the war ended and there was nothing wrong with

them,though alot were saved and made into SAR and Lancastrian versions.

In your picture Chuck the front excape hatch has a red outline.

The bombing camera aperture has no glass hence that it is a really dark shade

so you could do with opening up the round hole and setting inside some form

of camera, though you could always paint the circle gloss black with a small

grey circle in the middle to look like a camera lens

aerials002.jpg

Its a shame this thread will die after you have complete the Lanc' !... its such a good un'

ian.

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I reckon your safe to just put the two standard whip aerials on the fuselage

as in the picture i posted.

Alot of Lanc's were also SOC when the war ended and there was nothing wrong with

them,though alot were saved and made into SAR and Lancastrian versions.

In your picture Chuck the front excape hatch has a red outline.

The bombing camera aperture has no glass hence that it is a really dark shade

so you could do with opening up the round hole and setting inside some form

of camera, though you could always paint the circle gloss black with a small

grey circle in the middle to look like a camera lens

Its a shame this thread will die after you have complete the Lanc' !... its such a good un'

ian.

Thanks again for the info Ian. I did note the red escape hatch outline and the camera lens. I'll have to steal some red decals from my stash for the hatch, but I'm still not sure I know what I'm going to do for the bombing camera. I wish I had noticed this earlier before painting, so an external fake camera seems the way to go now. We'll see- I always like a challenge.

As long as you're sure the aerials should go on, I'll fashion some out of thin brass. I don't see them on any of my photographs, but that's likely because they are so thin the camera didn't pick them up with the low resolution of old black and white phtography.

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"April 9, 1945. Target: Kiel shipbuilding yards, U-boat pens and workshops. Many searchlights, bombed ground markers. Good prang. Found out the next day that the Admiral Scheer was hit 5 times and was now capsized"

Sometimes you have to make compromises, even when you know what you're doing is incorrect. The pic above of my uncle's Lanc clearly shows a bombing camera at the front of the bomb bay doors, which appears to be blacked out for some reason, although that might just be a reflection from the glass lens that covers the camera. I really wish I'd known about this camera before, because I could have made a decent one before I got into painting. I suppose I could still install something, but that would be a lot of work and the cost/benefit gain after sanding and re-painting just isn't there.

In checking out the port side of the front fuselage, it appears that Tamiya put a couple of circles near where the camera should be. Could this lower one be their attempt at a camera lens? It is too high on the fuselage compared to many pics I have of this camera, but it will have to do, mostly because adding a third circle here would really make this part of the fuselage way too busy. Excuse the red decals. Microsol is still doing its thing around the front escape hatch..........

Bombs6.jpg

Soooo, looking at pics of the real deal, I simply drilled a hole about the size of the camera lens, painted the inside of the hole silver, then covered the Tamiya circle with a thin piece of clear plastic, followed by a circular decal (the numbers on the decal sheet are perfect). Not too bad- it will just have to do and it's sure better than nothing.....

Bombs7.jpg

I had a lot better luck with the bombs. Remember my pic of the kit vs. Eduard modified tail fins?....

BombBay9.jpg

Well, after a lot of picky, picky work and 18 bombs later, I painted them all Alclad Steel first....

Bombs1.jpg

Bombs2.jpg

Then painted them using- you guessed it- Salt weathering! I had a tough time finding good color pics of the so-called "200 lb bomb" that Tamiya calls them in their instructions. I found lots of pics of 250 and 500 pounders, but no 200 ones. The other thing I couldn't find was a similar bomb with a yellow ring on the nose of each bomb, again as Tamiya has instructed, so I went with the light green and red rings that I found on many pics. The green ring indicates that these are "GP" General Purpose 250 lb bombs. The other thing I noted in all my Lancaster bomb pics during WW-II is that these bombs were very beat up. Some of them hardly had any paint left on them when they were loaded, as they were stored outside and spread out all over the fields, presumably to prevent a bomb attack destroying them all in a direct hit of a cluster of them. Anyway, here's my interpretation of what I think they looked like.....

Bombs3.jpg

The 4,000 lb. "Cookie" was a lot easier to identify and paint properly.....

Bombs4.jpg

Chipped, scratched and weathered. You just can't get this random effect with a paintbrush....

Bombs5.jpg

Next up, Decals! Thanks for checking in.

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I thought you were- :woot.gif: ah one brick short of a full stack. when you salted your bombs- but your reason /history lession showed I was not nearly as clever as I thought I was.

So, good job they look great :thumbsup:

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Chuck...... Bombs look ace. This will be one stunner and when its completed i hope your going to

give me your address so i can rob it :woot.gif:

I never noticed the chute in your picture i should have ! if your going to add it

heres the dimensions for one in 1/48th, in Tamiya's Grandslam/Dambuster kit

they are supplied as standard and heaven no's why they never put it in their

normal kits. The chute has angled sides and not just 90 degree's

windowchute001.jpg

Filthy Lanc' bomb load. notice the chalked numbers ! might be good to add something like that to your bombs.

lanc001.jpg

Edited by ian lanc
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I never noticed the chute in your picture i should have ! if your going to add it

here's the dimensions for one in 1/48th, in Tamiya's Grandslam/Dambuster kit

they are supplied as standard and heaven no's why they never put it in their

normal kits. The chute has angled sides and not just 90 degree's

Well that makes it easy, because I have this kit in my stash! Looks like I'll be robbing another kit to make the current build look pretty.

Question: Is that circle at the front of the Tamiya kit supposed to be the camera? If so, what's the other circle gizmo above it?

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Question: Is that circle at the front of the Tamiya kit supposed to be the camera? If so, what's the other circle gizmo above it?

Hi Chuck,

I have been told its an access panel to the camera, so leave it as it is !

So glad you've got the 'windows' chute :]

ian.

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"April 10, 1945. Target: Plauen marshalling yards and supply center. Few search lights, no fighters and slight flak. Bombed Newhaven"

Thanks Guys! You can just tell by the lack of German resistance above that the war is coming to an end. I wonder if my uncle and the other airmen could feel it at the time?

Anyway, on to the build and what some of us are terrified of: DECALS!

I used to hate the decaling stage because I wasn't very good at it and I found that months of work could go down the drain with a bad decal job with lots of silvering. Silvered decals are a deal killer in my books. I have a 1/32 Revell F-15E on my shelf to remind me of what NOT to do with decals. They look terrible.

This was all before I discovered Future and Microsol. With these two magic liquid aids, I now look forward to decals, even if they can be tricky and/or brittle at times. The Tamiya decals in the kit are very good and the Aeromaster decals I bought , "Lancaster Bombers Part 1" are even better, although they do take their time coming off the decal backing . Now I won't bore you all with a decal lesson, but I will show some of the "Before/After" shots of the decals as they dissolved into the paint, with NO silvering!

Here's an example of the Tamiya kit decals right after a bit of Microsol. The first time I witnessed this kind of wrinkling and silvering I tried to play with the decal with disastrous results. All I can say now is, LEAVE IT ALONE!

Decal1.jpg

Here's the same decals after about 1/2 an hour of drying. Not so bad any more, is it? Please excuse the Kleenex debris.

Decal2.jpg

Here's a good sequence of Microsol doing its magic with decals. The big roundel on the wings has to cover a lot of relief, so this is a real test of getting the decal to settle down and conform to the wing detail and the paint. Here it is with it's first coat of Microsol. Remember, you can place Microsol on with a paintbrush but you can't play with it after about 15 seconds or you'll be very sorry!....

Decal3.jpg

Here it is dry, but it's still not good enough.....

Decal4.jpg

Another coat of Microsol.....

Decal5.jpg

Another 1/2 hour later. Voila!

Decal11.jpg

The dingy door in the starboard wing. Note the rivets pop through the decals and you can't detect the border of the decal.....

Decal6.jpg

The sides can be very tricky, so I usually tilt the model 90 degrees to make sure decal surface is flat so that gravity and the Microsol flatten out the decal. My uncle's Squadron, RAF 101, used SR as the first letters of the aircraft code, so the Aeromaster decals were a good start because they have an aircraft with "SR-W" on them.

Now this part is really cool. Thanks to Ianlanc and his buddies over at The Lancaster Archive Forum, they helped me find the actual letters and serial number of my uncle's Lanc! With the nose art pic, we know the last letter of the code must have been a "V" and with my uncle's log book and recollection of his air crew names, they tracked down his aircraft as "SR-V2", Serial number ME419, which is a MarkI Lancaster. Unfortunately, now that I have this new information, it turns out that this late aircraft had no side windows at all, so rather than painting over them I should have deleted them altogether. Too late! We also don't know if my uncles nose art pic of "Virgin Vicky" was of his Lanc or another that he flew with, so to reduce any more decal work that may or may not be accurate, I'm going with just "SR-V". As mentioned above, the Aeromaster decals have the "SR", but they also have an "A" for another aircraft that I simply inverted and cut the central cross line out of to create the "V". For the "ME419" serial number, I stole the "ME499" from the "Part 2" decal kit and replaced the middle 9 with a 1. It doesn't look too bad....

Decal8.jpg

A close-up. Note the single thickness decals of the letters melt into the paint and rivets. Unfortunately, the roundel is a 3 part decal, so getting relief to show through 3 layers is a lot more difficult....

Decal9.jpg

The underside, being all black, is a real challenge to avoid silvering. So far, so good.....

Decal10.jpg

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Thanks Mark, but the real test is when I add a weathering wash and dull coat everything. With everything looking so shiny it's hard to photograph and some of the "chipped paint" is naturally duller than the rest of the paint, but when I dull coat this bird it should all come together nicely and look a lot more natural- and beat up. Those exhaust stains on the wings should look good too, or at least I hope they do!

Edited by chuck540z3
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Even the use of light and dark chalk pastels between coats of dull coat to help highlight or darken specific areas, and blend the signs of use and abuse between the camouflage and the black may help a bit. Just an idea... Hardly a suggestion.

Chuck, I'm waiting patiently to see amazing build as it progresses.

Cheers!

Mark.

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Chuck

I'm most impressed with the "show and tell" on how to do a great decal job. :worship: It will help me on my next attempt.

However a question occurs to me :unsure: , as you have chipped and worn the paint; wouldn't the same kind of activity happen to the markings (decals) in some manner?

Rest assured this is no way a criticism, just my little brain striving for enlightenment :huh:

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However a question occurs to me :thumbsup: , as you have chipped and worn the paint; wouldn't the same kind of activity happen to the markings (decals) in some manner?

Good question and one that I'll be addressing fairly soon. The problem with actually "chipping" decals is that they will wind up looking like just a bad decal job, so you need to use a paintbrush after the fact and "chip" the decals that way with silver paint. I have a new method I am going to experiment with using a sharpie pen that has metallic ink.

Once the decals are done, I'll reseal them with Future to protect them and also give me a clean finish to add weathering like ProModeler wash, which will dull down and dirty the decals some more. Because most of the panel lines are raised and all the rivets that I added are tiny, I'll likely go with a solvent based wash instead so that it gets into every tiny groove and rivet. The ProModeler wash works great on thick recessed panel lines, but I think it will be too "coarse" for this application. We'll see.

Bottom line is, the decals are way too clean at this stage, so they still need some work to make them look more natural.

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