Supermarine Spitfire PR.XIX

Kit:	Airfix 1/72; kit bought in 2009, started in 2014, completed on 2024-09-01.
Aircraft:	31040/"60" (ex-RAF PS875), Flygflottilj 11, Flygvapnet, Nyköping, 1950-1951

The PR.XIX was the final photo-reconnaissance version of the Spitfire, and was used during the Cold War not only by the RAF but also by Sweden and Turkey [12]. Sweden acquired 50 ex-RAF Spitfire PR.XIXs in 1948 and used them until 1955. The Swedish designation for this type is S.31 (where the "S" stands for "spaning", reconnaissance). [4] has a great article about the history of these aircraft, including how the Swedes managed to acquire them. The particular aircraft I chose to model served with Flygflottilj 11 in Nyköping, and I found several pictures (at least 4) of this aircraft that date back to 1950 and 1951. According to some sources the aircraft was scrapped in August 1955.

I bought this kit soon after it was released in 2009, and I started it (I think) sometime around 2014, so it only took me 15 years to go from the purchase to a finished model! This journey was not without troubles; see below.

Construction Notes

Generally speaking the Airfix kit is excellent, except for the trench-like panel lines. After I first airbrushed the model with PRU Blue I realized the lines were just far too pronounced, and I filled them with Vallejo Acrylic Resin Putty and Mr. Surfacer 1000 (brushed, from a jar). After serious sanding I sprayed several coats of (decanted) Mr. White Surfacer 1000, and repeated filling and sanding a few times. The result is much better. The Airfix kit was issued in 2009 during the period when Airfix went a bit crazy with panel lines; I have been pleased to see that cooler heads have since prevailed.

The only other problem I had with the kit was that the trailing edges, at wing roots, needed some special attention to make them smooth and thin. I used both Tamiya Putty and Mr. Surfacer 1000. Given all the puttying and sanding that went into removing the panel lines, this was a minor issue. I replaced the kit's rather simplistic exhausts with QuickBoost resin parts (set QB 72 236), and I also replaced the main landing gear legs and wheels with better ones I discovered in my spares box.

Color and Markings

Swedish Spitfires were painted overall with PRU Blue. It seems that people cannot always agree on what the color is like. The kit instructions' suggestion is to use Humbrol #230, but to my eye that is far too dark. I ended up mixing my own from Mr. Color #366 and #110 (see below) which at least in this scale gives me a realistic-looking result. That is my interpretation, anyway. The kit instructions (the kit comes with markings for this individual aircraft) also suggested that this aircraft's spinner would have been red, but photographs clearly show it having been some lighter color; [13] claims it was yellow.

Unfortunately, the colors of the national emblems are all wrong; except for the unit emblem I replaced all the decals with ones I created myself. Since I printed the decals using a color laser printer, I first needed white backgrounds, because the printed color is not opaque. For the national insignia I painted white circles, for the yellow numbers I simply created white decals which I placed on the model first. The result with the latter is not perfect, but it is much better than if I had used the kit's decals. Note also that Swedish national markings are particularly sensitive for even slight problems with alignment when produced with the traditional silk-screen method. The laser-printed decals do not suffer from this problem.

Also, the kit's decal sheet is missing the sign for the first aid kit and some stenciling, just under the cockpit. Oddly, the instruction sheet shows those, decal #16, but on the actual sheet the decal numbering only goes up to #11 (yep, "up to 11", haha). I prepared my own decals also for the missing bits. Note that [8] seems to suggest that Airfix has later replaced the original sheet with one printed by Cartograf (with correct yellow).

These are the paints I used:

Trench-filling underway; as you can see I had already sprayed the aircraft before noticing how bad the panel lines really were.

Touching up after spraying the primer.

Touching up the trailing edges.

First test of my custom decals. The color is much better than on the Airfix sheet.

References Used

There is no shortage of reference material about the Spitfire. For a late-marque PR variant, the sources below turned out to be useful. For any Griffon-engined Spitire an excellent source is [12], and for Swedish Spitfires [1, 4, 7, 11, 13] have many good photographs; [8, 11] have a review of the Airfix kit, and [9] covers Airfix's more recent quarter-offering.

1. Aeroplane Monthly July 1976
2. Aeroplane Monthly April 2008
3. Aeroplane Monthly April 2012
4. Aeroplane Monthly March 2015
5. Aeroplane Monthly May 2019
6. Air Enthusiast Seventeen (December 1981)
7. Allt om hobby Nr 7 2009
8. Allt om hobby Nr 2 2013
9. Allt om hobby Nr 4 2018
10. Dam-busters - The Amazing story of Operation Chastise (Prins); Kelsey Publishing Group 2013
11. IPMS-Mallari 182 (1/2011)
12. The Supermarine Spitfire, A Comprehensive Guide for the Modeller - Part 2: Griffon-Powered (Humphreys); Modellers Datafile 5; SAM Publications 2001
13. Svenska Flygvapnets Spaningsflygplan 1926-1986 (Karlström); Flygplansritningar 4; Allt om Hobby 1988
14. Wings of Fame volume 5

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