Supermarine Spitfire Mk I 1:5 Scale Model

There is one reason why building a model is better than building a life representation: cost. Even though it's a 1:5 model I'm sure it would be more than 5x more expensive than the one he has built. When it goes to difficulty of building a small version or a large version I would have to say that depends on the exactness of his model. If he knows exactly how everything should be than it might not make a difference but if his model is not 100% true to the plane than I would say model is easier. If he wanted a working full size plane (one he can fly) I'd have to say that one would be the hardest to built.

The problem is in the word itself: "model (n): the act of representing something (usually on a smaller scale)" [among several other definitions; PWSlack's italics]. As a rule-of-thumb, every time the scale is reduced by a factor of 3 then an additional major compromise has to be built into a 'scale' model: the laws of thermodynamics don't scale with dimensions; a 1:5 scale model aircraft won't fly at 20% of the airspeed of the real thing. On a steam locomotive, the clearances in a coupling rod bearing when new are typically 0.020", and were it scaled linearly a 1:76.4 model (that's 4mm:1ft, a popular UK scale) comes in at 0.00026" or 6.6 microns, which is a friction weld, almost! Many individuals enjoy slot-car racing, where the models hurtle along at several times the prototype speed, allowing for the scale; the prototypes hve a high-powered combustion engine and not a pick-up skate with super-dooper low-voltage electric motor (though the time may come...). And there's fierce debate to be found in modelling circles over the subjects of scaling weight and time.

A small child will allow its imagination to fill in the blanks - something exploited by commercial toy-makers.

The important thing with models is to suspend disbelief (just like one does at the theatre), to allow the imagination to enjoy the performance, and (if one feels like it) to applaud afterwards, either inwardly or outwardly as well.

One cannot help applaud that 1:5 Supermarine Spitfire Mk I outwardly. Absolutely delicious!

A brilliant looking model.

An old mate of mine is a famous maker of minature firearms and crossbows...some of which are in world famous museums and collections (he lives in Florida now)

Don't get me wrong I'm not knocking the skill...but in terms of physical labour there is much less in a minature!

If you have ever tried forging a medieval steel crossbow, you will soon realise that you can saw file and bend a miniature one relatively easilly.

He stared on crossbows when he made one to a 1/4 scale drawing I'd done....mind I did have to show him how to make the trigger mechanism work.

Just for fun I made a miniature seige engine... see action shot..shooting a marble!

Masu

What a beautiful representation of the most beautiful airplane ever made! The cockpit detail required more patience and determination than I can even imagine. It's easy to imagine an exhausted 1:5 scale pilot taking off to face the HE-111s and Messerschmits of the Luftwaffe to save his country.

DickL

In the late 1800's my grandfather was a very young man and a blacksmith. Keep in mind that blacksmiths did not shoe horses! They were the early equivalent of the machinist. For example, to pass his apprenticeship, he had to be able to file any piece of metal to within .001" by sight!!!

His first employer was a railroad company in New York. He helped build locomotives for the company. Anyway, one day the blacksmiths all went on strike. To fill his idle time, he carved a single-cylinder, four-stroke, gas engine out of dense oak. I'm talking piston, rings, valves, springs, cam, and everything. He added gas and oil, and it ran great until it burned up! But such was the abilities of those guys at that time!

Great story...

I'd loved to have seen that! Oak is just great stuff...

An old guy I worked with once told me how he patched up a disintegrated big end shell by using a piece of leather off his belt, and it lasted long enough to get him home!

Masu,

Also, don't feel too bad, it looks as though this guy has access to some serious plastic molding equipment!!! I have a friend that's going for his degree in industrial design, and he desperately wants to get a part time job with this one particular company that has the ability to fabricate in plastic anything that you can give it in CAD and CNC.

Hi vermin & others,

The reason I chose the de Havilland mosquito as the next project is that it was all constructed from wood and a 1:12 scale version can use pretty much the same techniques and materials while still being capable of flying. The fuselage on the real version was made in concrete moulds that were used to as formers and consisted of two thin layers of ply wood and a thicker layer of balsa wood in the middle.

It really was a piece of creative engineering and far exceeded the design parameters. The original design was for it to carry a bomb load of 1,000 pounds but during one of the tests somebody overloaded the prototype with 10,000 pounds of dummy bombs. While the pilot was not too pleased and the sluggishness of the aircraft it did fly and surprised everybody when they realized what had happened.

It was also the fastest thing in the sky till the jets came along and was almost invisible to the primitive radars in use at the time. I believe Goering made a statement at one time that he could do with several squadrons of mosquitoes.

Another advantage is the fact that at a nearby Royal Australian Air Force base they are restoring a restoring a mosquito to flying condition so with some groveling and rounds of beer I can hopefully talk my way into letting me have a look and the real thing.

It's also a joint project with my father who is getting on in years and totally frustrated with not doing anything constructive. He made surgical instruments and worked with the early micro surgeons to develop many of the instruments and he is also pretty good at working with wood. Like me he is also an aircraft nut, so, you couldn't think of a better project to keep the both of us out of trouble.

I have ordered the plans for it and an waiting for them to come from the USA and I will then need to modify them to suit our plans so it will be a while before we get going.

In the meantime is there anybody out there that feels confident enough to built a couple of 1:12 scale Rolls Royce 27 liter 60° V12 Merlin engines with appropriate reduction gear boxes and variable pitch 3 bladed propellers?

Was it faster than then the Bear-cat? the P-38 Lightning? the P-51?

Maximum Speed

• De Havilland Mosquito 361 knots 414 mph 668 km/h 18.6 ms^-1
• P38 Lightning 361 knots 414 mph 668 km/h 18.6 ms^-1
• P51 Mustang 381 knots 437 mph 703 km/h 19.5 ms^-1

So there is only 20 knots between the three of them which is pretty much nothing and the cruising speed are even closer together. However, if you look at the payloads they can carry it's a whole different story.

• De Havilland Mosquito 10,700 lb 4,855 kg
• P38 Lightning 8,820 lb 4,002 kg
• P51 Mustang 4,465 lb 2,026 kg

The other thing to remember is that the mosquito was primarily a bomber not a fighter yet it could carry a useful bomb load while still having a performance comparable with the fastest fighters in the sky at that time. Also as it was primarily wood the radar systems available then had a lot of trouble detecting it. All up it was an ideal aircraft for specialist high precision bombing missions and when flown at low altitude could attack without warning. It was really the first of the stealth aircraft and while F117 Nighthawk can out perform it the mosquito stacks up pretty well against it especially when it comes to range where the mosquito is the clear winner.

The other advantage was that being made from wood it was easy to build and repair especially in England where they had shortages of aluminium and people qualified to work with metals. The mosquito was made by numerous carpenters and cabinet makers that were distributed all over England and working from small workshops that were difficult to find and bomb. Even if you did manage to take out one there were plenty of other carpenters that could take over the production.

The concept was also pretty much the beginning of the composite material structures that are now the in thing in aviation. I don't think you would have too much trouble constructing it out of fiberglass or carbon fiber composites and if they were available then I am sure they would have used them.

My Father in Law used to work on the mosquitos and Spitfires he was a mechanic in the RAF... he used to amuse our kids with stories of how his breakfast sausages once got straffed by the Luftwaffe! (sadly now dead)

There is a whole section of the community here who won't accept the mosquito was best ('cos it wasn't made in the USA )

Sounds good, just remember that at least the P-51 carried a lot of armor for the pilot's sake. I would hate to be in a Mosquito when a mad Messerschmitt let loose with his 20 mm cannon!

Hi vermin,

I would hate to be in a Mosquito when a mad Messerschmitt let loose with his 20 mm cannon!

It would depend greatly on which Messerschmitt you are talking of. The Bf-109 Germany's main fighter in WW II, could only do 640 km/h, so it would have a hard time catching the mosquito if it didn't have a height advantage and warning of its approach.

The Bf-110 which was Germany's twin engine fighter, didn't have a snowballs chance in hell as flat out it could only do 560 km/h making over 100 km/h slower.

The Me-262 was certainly faster with a maximum speed of 870 km/h but that was a jet and had serious performance and handling problems that would have made it difficult to go after a mosquito that was belting along at low altitude. They were also very few Me-262 available and by that stage the pilots that were flying them were pretty inexperienced and I think I remember reading somewhere that the 262 killed more pilots during training than the allies managed to shoot down so it was really its own worst enemy.

The Me-163 was certainly fast enough at 960 km/h but it was really an exercise in futility as you could only fly it flat out or engine off and trying to shoot something that you are approaching at 300 km/h made it about as effective as using rocks thrown from a WW I biplane. The 163 was definitely its own worst enemy and killed more pilots on during takeoff on their maiden flight in it than survived long enough to land let alone shoot at anything. Even then, if you weren't really careful a fuel leak could dissolve the aircraft and pilot.

I was watching a program not that long ago about Germany's so called wonder weapons during WW II and many believe that the time, effort, money and resources they spent on developing technically superior weapons was their undoing. Basically they were trying to do too much with too little and never managed to produce enough of anything to be of any great benefit. The classic example is the tank. The Germans had by far the best tanks in WW II but if you only have 6,000 superior panther tanks competing against something like 84,000 Russian T-34 just on the eastern front alone, you haven't got a chance of winning. I can't remember which German general it was that said it but, one of them stated something along the lines of ;

"It's like and elephant attacking ants. The elephant will kill millions of ants but it can never eradicate then and ultimately the ants will always win."

The V1 and V2 made a nasty mess in London for a while... shock and awe.

One of the things the Brits did was to state that the V1 were over flying London and crashing into the country side when in fact they were hitting London. This was then deliberately leaked so the Germans would find out and so adjusted the flying time so they would actually fall short of London.

The V2 was a whole different ball game and the only way to stop them was to stop them from being launched. One of the horrific statistics with the V2 was that more people died in forced labor constructing the V2 than were killed by it when it was fired at London.

When you consider the amount of effort, time, money and materials that went into the construction of the V2 and the fact that it could only deliver a 1,000 kg payload it wasn't a really efficient use of resources. On the other hand the allies had the 10,000 kg (22,000 lb) grand slam that could be dropped from a single Lancaster bomber and destroy things like railway viaducts, bridges, battleships, submarine pens, and disable all the factories within 500 m with a single bomb you realize how pointless and ineffective the V2 really was. If Germany had stuck with mass produced and less sophisticated technology the outcome may well have been different.

Then again, no matter what the Germans did the US was going to develop the atomic bomb first and since the original target for the first bomb was Germany there was nothing they could have done to change the final outcome. You can't expect to win a war using conventional weapons against an adversary that responds by nuking your major cities. The interesting thing about it was that the German physicists had stuffed up the calculations and believed that to create a runaway chain reaction you needed hundreds of times more uranium than you really did. When the bomb was released over Hiroshima the German physicists that were in captivity were deliberately leaked the information. The were however being monitored and the conversations they had revealed that they didn't have a clue what was going on.

If you've ever seen the PBS series, The Prize, it brings a whole new understanding to some of the odd things that Hitler did. Almost all of his strategy was influenced by one thing: getting control of the oil fields in the Carcasses. He knew he had to get to oil. Near the end of the war oil supplies were so drained, they used oxen to pull the jets out to the air field so as not to use precesses fuel.

The Japanese were trying the same gambit, but were eventually denied oil from Burma. They developed a process for getting fuel from pine trees, but the process required 40,000 pine trees to fuel one Zero for one mission.

Of course, this is all a moot point considering the secret development of the atomic bomb. Oil would have done no good.

Still, in a wooden plane with 20 mm slugs zipping through! That's got to be scary!!!

Invading countries illegally to get at their oil..?

What a preposterous idea!

George & Tony (aka Del the Cat)

"Of course, this is all a moot point considering the secret development of the atomic bomb. Oil would have done no good."

The fact that the allies were going to develop the atomic bomb really made everything that happened in WW II pretty pointless. It didn't matter what Germany did or didn't do as you have no chance of winning a war using conventional weapons when you enemy has nuclear weapons and is willing to use them. Especially when you enemy is the only one that has them and has no fear of the repercussions of using them.

Germany was just lucky that it had already capitulated when the atomic bomb became operational. Then again, if the bomb had become operational a year earlier the D day invasions and total destruction of Germany may have been limited to the annihilation of one or two cities rather than the raising of just about everything. If the atomic bomb did become operational before Germany capitulated I wonder which city would have copped it. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were selected because they were relatively pristine and that made assessing the effects of the atomic bomb fairly easy. By then Germany had been pretty much flattened so it would be a case of selecting which pile of rubble you were going to rearrange using the most expensive and powerful weapon developed to date.

"Still, in a wooden plane with 20 mm slugs zipping through! That's got to be scary!!!"

I certainly wouldn't like to be on the receiving end but it may not be as bad as you think because the wooden structure may not be dense enough to trigger the detonator and set off the explosives within the 20 mm shell. I seem to remember reading something about this but I cant remember if it was with the mosquito or something like the hurricane or swordfish that had large parts of their structure covered in canvas. The other point is that to shoot at it you need to catch it and as far as I know the only aircraft Germany had any number of that could catch it where the Me-262 and Me-163 and both of these has severe limitations and big handling problems.

I see nobody has come forward and offered to build a couple of 1:12 scale working replicas of the 27 liter V12 Rolls Royce Merlin engine to power my planned model. The scaled versions would only need a capacity of around 16 cc but I would insist that they had the proper 1:12 scale 3 bladed variable pitch props.

Something else I found out about the mosquito while doing the research on it, was that they had a squadron of them that were specially modified to carry a scaled down version of Barns Wallace's bouncing dam busting bomb. The were used against shipping and designed to explode under the ship but while in contact with the hull. I don't know if it was ever used but it would certainly break the back and do a hell of a lot of damage to any ship that was unfortunate enough to be hit by one.

The depth of human imagination when developing ways to commit mayhem on their fellow human beings never ceases to amaze me.

Although built in limited numbers, the HE-219 was faster than the Mosquito. It must be realized though that aircraft do not fly at their maximum speeds and maximum speed given for WWII aircraft is what they were capable of in level flight for relatively short bursts. They typically flew at cruise speed to optimize fuel efficiency. Most fighter aircraft that were shot down by enemy aircraft did not know they were under attack until they were hit from behind. It would have been similar for the Mosquito against JU-88 and ME-110 night fighters. A typical night intercept would be the ground control vectoring fighters toward enemy aircraft. The night fighter then picking up the enemy A/C on their radar sets and closing in from astern. They would fly slightly lower and close the gap until they could see the target. The Germans used obliquely aimed cannon, they would approach below the target and offset to the side and rake the bottom of the target with 20 mm cannon fire. A few second burst adequate to down most aircraft.

There were counter measures and the fast flying Mosquito was difficult to intercept as the interceptor had to be close to the flight path of the Mosquito. Mosquitos were also used against German night fighters. I remember talking to a flight instructor whose father-in-law was a former Mosquito pilot. He said that their squadron had 90% casualties in WWII.

The 1960's movie "633 Squadron", a fictionalized account of a Mosquito squadron with rather poor special effects, actually used half a dozen recently decomissioned Mosquitos for the movie and has some great flying sequences. It also has Ron Goodwins popular theme music which actually states the movie title with 6 beats followed by two groups of 3 beats. The theme music is available on i-Tunes as well as some other great theme music British composer Goodwin wrote (including Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare).

"Most fighter aircraft that were shot down by enemy aircraft did not know they were under attack until they were hit from behind. It would have been similar for the Mosquito against JU-88 and ME-110 night fighters."

This is very true and I was going to include the normal cruising speed for the aircraft quoted, but unfortunately I could not find the cruising speeds for all of them, so for the sake of clarity I left them out. It is however a fair assumption that the comparison of maximum speeds would show a similar ratio with cruising speeds.

For those that are interested there is a very important speed that is referred to as VNE which stands for Velocity Never to be Exceeded.

With an aircraft as the speed increases the control surfaces become more effective and so can exert more force in the air frame. If you go past VNE any movement of the controls will result in the control surfaces exerting more force on the airframe than it is designed for and will result in damage to the airframe. It is normally marked as a red line on the ASI (Air Speed Indicator) and you can clearly see it in the ASI on the right where it shows that the VNE for this aircraft is about 158 knots.

You can also a yellow and green arc on the ASI and these too have a meaning. If you are flying air speeds that are within the green arc the you can safely use full control deflection without damaging the air frame. The yellow arc indicates that if you use full control deflection you will over stress the aircraft and damage the airframe. You therefore need to reduce steadily reduce the amount of control movement when flying at speeds within the yellow arc.

You can also see a white arc that is inside the green arc. This indicates the speeds at which it is safe to use wing profile modifying surfaces like flaps, slats, leading edge flaps and lower the undercarriage without causing damage.

Sometimes there is a second red line added at the start of the green arc which is used to indicate the stall speed. Flying below this speed will result in the wings ceasing to create lift and as a result the wing will stall and the aircraft will drop from the sky like a rock. You may also end up in what is called a spin which is caused by slight differences in the performance of each wing and one wing staling while the other is still flying. Very nasty and if you don't know exactly what to do you are dead. You also need to do the exact opposite of what you would think needs to be done and many pilots were killed in the early days of afiation before somebody figured out how to get out of a spin.

It's a little more complex than that because as your altitude increases the ASI begins to read below the true speed you are traveling at by about 1% per 1,000 feet. When ever you refer to the speed as displayed on the ASI it is referred to as Indicated Air Speed. You then have True Air Speed which takes into account the altitude component and Ground Speed that accounts for the effect the wind has on the aircraft. They are all important speeds that are used by the pilot in various aspects of flying an aircraft.

Fantastic model aircraft. With all the effort to make it, I don't see how the owner could ever bring himself to fly it. But just knowing that it could fly...

The Spitfire Mk-1 was the RAF's top performing fighter in 1940 and was about a 350 mph aircraft. Later versions with more powerful engines were up to 100 mph faster. But the Mk-1 may have been the best handling, although the metal ailerons of later versions were an improvement. For 1940, 350 mph was leading edge.

The Hurricane, while 20 to 30 mph slower than the Mk-1 in 1940, was the RAF's top scoring fighter of the war, destroying more enemy aircraft than any other allied type and more than all other RAF aircraft combined.

For reasons not entirely clear, the top speed given for the P38 is usually published about 30 mph lower than actual. Lockheed tests showed the top speed of the last version, the P38-L, as 442 mph.

The Mosquito served as a bomber, photo reconnaissance, anti-shipping, and night fighter among other roles. The night fighter with its modifications was typically slower than other versions (largely due to the optically flat windscreen). However it depended mostly on what altitude and therefore the supercharger boost it was designed for. A PR version with pressurized cabin and 40,000+ ft altitude capability was the fastest version, I believe, with something like 425 mph top speed. The Mosquito was not suitable for dog-fighting and as such was not built to the necessary stress factors.

Few WWII aircraft could exceed 340 mph at sea level in level flight. If the engine was supercharged to provide adequate power, the planes gained about 3 mph per 1,000 foot gain in altitude -- although for geared superchargers there were sweet spots where the next stage kicked in and poor spots just before the next stage kicked in. The P-39, which was not supercharged for high altitude, was faster at low levels than some versions of its Bf 109 and FW 190 adversaries (as long as they were not diving on it from above).

The Mosquito was relatively small (compared to a four engine bomber), had largely wood construction and in a reconnaissance role flew alone. It consequently was more difficult to detect by radar, but one could not consider it a stealth aircraft. When the Luftwaffe developed night fighters with sufficient speed to effect interception, Mosquitoes fell prey to their guns even with the primative radars of WWII.

The Bearcat was designed as an air superiority fighter that could operate from escort carriers. As such it was more a replacement for Wildcats than Hellcats. Benefiting from later design knowledge, from what I have read, the Bearcat could have outperformed the P-38, 47 and 51 in the air superiority role, although its top published speed of around 427 mph was less. The Bearcat was developed too late to see combat in WWII and was soon replaced by jet aircraft in the air superiority role. It may have been the best propeller driven fighter ever.

The Spitfire contemporary of the Merlin powered P-51 was the mark IX. The planes had the same engine, but the Mustang with its greater streamlining and laminar flow wing was 20 to 30 mph faster at all altitudes and had a higher diving speed. The Spitfire being about 2,000 lbs lighter had better climb and turning characteristics. Of course the great characteristic of the Mustang was its internal fuel capacity, which combined with external fuel stores gave it a 2,000 mile range, about 3 times that of the Spitfire. The Mustang therefore served best as an offensive weapon, the Spitfire as a defensive weapon.