1-72 Hasegawa DAP Beaufighter Mk. 21
by Orlando
Sucre Rosales
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Hello, fellow modelers!
This time I’ll show my most recent build, a Hasegawa DAP
Beaufighter Mk. 21 from the 93rd squadron, nicknamed “The Green
Ghosts,” in 1-72 scale. Australian DAP factory built just 364 Beaufighters,
these saw action mainly in the Pacific theater against the Japanese ships (the
Japanese called the Beaufighter “The Whispering Death”.) The 93rd
squadron was formed in January 1945, and participated in very few sorties
before being disbanded in August 1945. I think that 93rd squadron
Beaufighters are famous just for their tail arts.
Hasegawa’s Beaufighter kits in 1-72 scale date from
the early years of this century, and are discontinued nowadays. They’re
beautifully molded and have a very good fit, and have been the subject of some
reviews. I just have to complain about the exhausts, the cockpit interior, the
decals … and those nasty ejector marks in places were they’re difficult to
correct, like the tail-wheel tires and the inside of the main undercarriage
doors. The exhausts were molded as two plain tapered tubes. Hasegawa did
include white metal replacements in some of their Beaufighter kits, but I
wasn’t lucky to get one of these kits … twice! Yes, my first Hasegawa
Beaufighter was a Mk. VI in desert camouflage, it came with these awful
exhausts and I was very disappointed. Later I read that Hasegawa began to include
the aforementioned white metal replacements, and when I knew that the newer Mk.
21 kit was released, I sold my Mk. VI and ordered a Mk. 21, with the hope of
seeing the white metal exhausts included in the box, but they were missing.
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My Green Ghost Beaufighter is in fact the third
Beaufighter I’ve built (I built two Airfix TF.X Beaufighters some 37 years ago,
only one of these survived.) It was built almost OOB, I just added Quickboost
resin porcupine exhausts, masking tape seat belts, an antenna made from human
hair … and a scratchbuilt rocket rail, because I lost one of the kit’s rails
after it was painted.
I spent some time researching the RAAF Beaufighters’
green. Although in theory it is RAAF Foliage Green (equivalent to FS34092 Euro
I Dark Green), some references state that the color is something between that
color and RLM70 Schwarzgrün. Some photographs of full size RAAF Beaufighters
are available on the Internet, but the green of the ones stored at museums is
darker than the green of those from wartime photographs (these photographs were
taken under a strong sunlight.) There is also a wide variety of greens in
photographs of finished models of RAAF Beaufighters, as can be checked on the
Internet. What is common among the majority of the photographs is that the
green has a drab tint that FS34092 doesn’t have.
I made some tests mixing MM FS34092 with MM RLM70 and
white, from these I chose a mix with a 2:3:1 proportion as the base color, and
made a darker and a lighter version to break the monochromatic look of the
model, and to make the model look lightly weathered. Well, after the model was
finished the contrast between the base color and its lighter version isn’t the
one I expected. If I was to make this model again, I would use darker shades of
green.
The first stage of the weathering was done right after
the painting, in this way the weathering was going to be protected with the
gloss clear coat that precedes decal application. As I previously noted, I
wanted a lightly weathered aircraft, so I just highlighted the panel lines with
drawing pencils and applied ground pastel chalks for dirt and dust, and also
for the gun blast residues.
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Hasegawa’s Mk. 21 kit came with decals for two
versions: N-SK (A8-116) “Babe” (it should read “Babs”) with Gremlins tail art, and
P-SK (A8-120) “Patty” with Parrots tail art; I chose the former. Unfortunately
the decals were “old school Hasegawa,” with their characteristic ivory white.
Moreover, the decals were thick and the stencils didn’t conform well to the
fuselage shape, the decals eventually silvered in some places, even though I
applied several coats of MicroSol (I found that Solvaset is too strong for
these decals). When I washed my model to remove decal adhesive residues,
unfortunately the starboard “Babe” decal left the model and was lost. I surely
have to revisit my decal application method in order to avoid more accidents
like this… At this stage I could have changed to P-SK version, but I kept with
N-SK because the kit decals didn’t include the “Patty” name, and the Gremlins
tail art is nicer, IMHO.
At this point the model was still gloss (the gloss
coat was applied also to the parts that weren’t already attached to the model,
such as the undercarriage legs and doors,) so I went to the second stage of
weathering, which consisted in a wash of sepia ink applied to the undercarriage
legs, the inner side of the undercarriage doors, the wheel hubs and the wheel
wells. I also airbrushed a strip of heavily thinned Gunze Sangyo H95 Smoke Gray
paint to represent exhaust residues on the area surrounding the exhausts under
the wings and under the nacelles.
After the weathering, I applied a flat clear coat to
seal everything and proceeded to final assembly, as I had the wheels, the
cowling rings, the rocket rails and the rockets already painted (by the way,
the yellow strips on the rocket heads were masked and painted.) For painting
the cowling ring and the exhausts I used Floquil Old Silver, a “burnt copper”
mix of Humbrol 12 copper and Humbrol 98 Chocolate brown (in 3:2 proportion,)
and MM Rust. I also highlighted the “hollow” exhaust outputs with thinned flat
black paint.
In conclusion, I’m very proud of my RAAF Beaufighter.
Though I know it could have been done a little better, it’s the only one of my
recent models that has been built in less than six months from beginning to
end. As some modelers say, “the learning curve never straightens out…”
Greetings from Caracas, the city in Venezuela where
Simon Bolivar, the Liberator of five nations and one of the greatest american
men of all times, was born 230 years ago.
Orlando Sucre Rosales
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Photos and text © by Orlando
Sucre Rosales