Supermarine
Spitfire Mk.Ia

About This Build

The Subject

These are my two tiny Spitfires from Airfix — a pair of Mk.Ia fighters posed together to recreate a Battle of Britain scramble scene. The concept came directly from the wealth of period photographs showing pilots lounging beside their aircraft between sorties, waiting for the telephone to ring and the order to scramble. There is something deeply evocative about that particular moment — the pilots' casual posture masking the constant, grinding tension of Fighter Command's summer of 1940. Translating that atmosphere into a small-scale diorama was the driving idea behind this build.

The Kit

The Airfix kit itself is a genuinely nice little package. It is inexpensive, goes together with minimal fuss and yields a very satisfying result — provided you bring some patience and a willingness to address a few of its quirks. The moulding is clean and the outline is convincing at arm's length. I decided to detail the cockpit of one aircraft and display its canopy in the open position, which required cutting the canopy into three separate pieces: the windscreen stays in place while the two sliding sections are replaced with thinner, home-vacuformed material to reduce the apparent thickness of the framing. The result is visibly more delicate and more realistic. Eduard's photo-etch cockpit set for the 1/72 Spitfire provided the seat harness, instrument panel overlay and a few smaller details that make the open cockpit worth peering into. At this scale every small improvement counts.

Panel Lines

One of the characteristics of this Airfix kit is that its recessed panel lines are rather over-accentuated — they catch shading washes rather too eagerly and can look cartoonish if left as-moulded. I filled them selectively with Vallejo acrylic filler applied by brush, sanded back and rescribed only the most prominent lines once the primer had cured. It adds time but the result justifies the effort. Working at 1/72 scale imposes its own compromises, of course: some details that appear on the real aircraft are simply too small to reproduce faithfully, and certain kit parts are unavoidably a little heavy. The advantage of the smaller scale is that the whole diorama fits in a fraction of the space a 1/32 model would demand, and you can photograph the scene in a way that genuinely suggests presence.

The Diorama Base

The diorama base was built around a small Flightpath photo-etched dispersal hut, which anchors the composition and gives the eye a focal point beyond the aircraft themselves. Revell No. 02401 RAF Ground Crew figures — carefully painted in their period overalls — are posed to suggest a natural moment: one figure leaning against the wing root, another standing nearby with a mug of tea, reflecting those iconic wartime photographs. Ground texture was laid up with filler, sand and fine grit, then painted and weathered to suggest an English grass airfield in summer. All colours are from AK Real Colors Set No.38 supplemented by RC293 for the Sky undersurface band. Weathering was kept restrained: light streaking with oils along the fuselage sides, gentle chipping on the leading edges and a very diluted black-brown panel wash. The result is a model that reads as used but not war-weary.