Eduard 1/48 SPAD XIII Late 8196
By Dave Calhoun
Overview
The French Spad XIII was based on the earlier Spad VII fighter, but used a more powerful engine and carried two Vickers machine guns instead of the single gun on the earlier aircraft. It was introduced in mid 1917 and became the standard French fighter in most escadrilles by the end of the year. The performance was so great that nine different manufacturers contracted to build the Spad XIII. Each manufacturer followed common plans but also had a slightly different method of painting the five color camouflage, and some researchers are able to identify the manufacturer by examining the camouflage pattern and insignia in photos.
The early versions had rounded wing tips and a 220 hp Hispano-Suiza V-8 engine. There were stability issues due to the rounded wing tips, and later versions went back to the square tipped wings similar to the Spad VII. Also a 235 hp engine was introduced in the later runs. This kit from Eduard is the Late version with the squared wing tips. Decals are provided for four different French aircraft, one for Sergent Fernand Chavannes, SPA 112, August 1918. Second is Lieutenant Charles Nungesser SPA 65(GC 13) September 1918. Third is Adjutant Marius Blanc SPA 81, summer 1918. Last is Captaine Rene Fonck, SPA 103 (GC 15) Fall 1918.
The Build
I decided to build the aircraft flown by Lieutenant Charles Nungesser, Escadrille SPA.65 (GC.13), September, 1918. It is Serial # S 10039. There are several photos of this aircraft available online, and it was determined by French colors expert Alan Toelle that this aircraft was manufactured by SAFCA, and I based my camouflage pattern on Alan's drawings of a similar aircraft in this production series.
One thing to note, after looking at the actual photos of this aircraft and a video of it taking off (heading away from the camera) in "Four Years of Thunder" I determined that the pennant behind the cockpit painted on the rear turtledeck was painted white, and was not symmetrical in order to confuse the aim of enemy pilots. The decal provided in the kit was Red, White and Blue, as shown in a profile in a French magazine. But this does not match the photos and video, so I went with white paint instead of using the Eduard decal.
All of the other decals were used from the kit, although I changed the color of the blue on the wing and rudder stripes and cockades by overpainting the dark blue color with Model Master Intermediate blue. Nungesser also carried a camera on the upper wing which Eduard has included in the kit.So with my preliminary research completed it was time to begin building the model.
The parts follow the standard for most Eduard kits. There is a sheet of photoetched parts with some pre-painted components. There are also the Quick masks, diecut tape to mask the wheels and windshields. There are 3 sprues of a beige colored plastic and a sprue of clear parts with 3 different windshields.
The parts breakdown is similar to the 1/72 scale kit, with a separate turtledeck & horizontal control surface piece that attaches to the box like fuselage, avoiding any seam filling along the center with the nicely molded stringer detail. There are optional parts for the propeller, although it does not tell which one to use for each of the 4 versions. One is a Gremont while the other is an Éclair. For Nungesser's aircraft, one of the photos showed a round tip on the prop, so I determined that it used the Éclair prop, part # C7.
The surface detail on the ribs is amazing – they have replicated the rib stitching on the rib tapes, and I'm not sure if it will show through a coat of camouflage paint but it is there!
The interior has about half of the parts of the kit, full gauges with separate instruments in pre-painted photoetch, all fuel lines and selector switch, nice seat with prepainted harness, and nice stick & pedals. There is also a pre-painted map and holder to go inside the cockpit.
The interior is quite busy, and I began construction by painting all of the wood parts for the interior, the struts and the tail skid with an ivory acrylic paint. When dry I used a thin coat of Windsor & Newton artist's oils, using Burnt sienna and using the brush to simulate streaks and wood grain. Once dry all of the wood parts were painted with a clear gloss to seal them.
The balance of the interior parts were painted with MisterKit clear doped linen, Model Master Aluminum and Intermediate blue, with details picked out in flat black. Wires between the ribs and longerons were made with silver beading wire.
One thing to note, if you are building a version with open lower engine panels, you can see the engine bearers through these holes in the forward fuselage. There are separate engine bearers, part C10 and C13, but you will be able to see right through the hole in these parts and out the other side. I used a block of styrene cut to match the bottom of a Hispano-Suiza oil pan and painted it aluminum, basically just to block the light from shining through the holes.
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After careful fitting of the interior parts I was able to cement the fuselage halves together. Despite having read about these parts not fitting correctly I did not have any problems with mine. A light sanding of both halves of the fuselage before adding the interior gave me a nice clean and tight joint.
The first problem that I encountered came with the lower wing. There are two separate wing panels held together by two scale sized spars, and unfortunately while I was cutting the wing off of the sprue one of the spars cracked, and I had to glue it back together, hardly a strong point to support the lower wings. The wings were glued into position under the floor and then the floor and lower wing are attached to the fuselage as one section.Then you add the interior hoses and details, followed by the upper deck with instruments, and to finish the interior the nicely molded seat has a 5 piece set of photoetched parts for the seat harness, which come pre-painted on one side.
Next the top of the fuselage is added, this is one piece from the forward cowling back to the horizontal stabilizer. Be sure when you glue it that the lower wings and horizontal stabilizer remain parallel. After this dried I added the lower fuselage pan, which contains the lower engine panel and fuel tank. Once these dried I noticed that the front edge of the upper fuselage and the lower fuselage stuck too far forward, compared to the fuselage sides. Rather than adding filler I just held it tail up and sanded the upper and lower pieces down on a flat board with wet and dry sandpaper. This allowed the cowling to fit perfectly without any filler needed.
After the fuselage was basically complete it was time to paint the 5 color camouflage scheme as used by SAFCA. I tried something new by primering the aircraft with Model master aluminum, then painting all of the metal panels with gloss black. I did the 5 color camouflage following the pattern on the instruction sheet. Unfortunately this did not really give me the aluminized sheen to the paint that was needed for the French 5 color scheme, and also when corresponding with Alan Toelle he informed me that the camouflage scheme on the instruction sheet is incorrect for the SAFCA built aircraft.
So back to the drawing board, I mixed most of my paints with Model Master aluminum to give me the authentic aluminized colors as used on these aircraft, I mixed a light green, dark green and chestnut brown with aluminum. I used the Model master enamels for all except the Beige, I could not find an enamel close enough to the right shade and ended up going with Mister Kit French Beige right out of the bottle. The underside and wheels were painted Model Master French light blue-gray.
I used silly Putty to mask off the camouflage and airbrushed it on, as the original paint was applied by brush and had a sharp edge. I also masked off the rear of the cockpit in a triangular area and painted it white to match the photos of this aircraft. After the paint had dried I gave it a coat of Future acrylic floor polish to give me a gloss surface to apply the decals.
The decals went on fine, and conformed to all hinge lines and panel lines with a little Micro Sol. A coat of Model Master Semi-gloss clear sealed the decals and gave it a doped fabric appearance. I masked off the metal panels on the nose and upper wing and sprayed these gloss since the metal panels used a different type of paint than the fabric parts did.
Next I added the details, the nicely molded Vickers guns, the windscreen, exhaust pipes and cabine struts. I made a jig out of clear sheet styrene with holes drilled in it to match the strut position of the upper wing, which allowed me to get these struts in the correct position.
The interplane struts were painted in the camouflage colors, Alan informed me that the small forward strut on the cabine should not be natural wood with cloth tapes, they were always painted the camouflage color. I next painted all of the interplane struts and the prop with ivory acrylic covered with burnt sienna artist oil wash to give me nice wood grain parts. Once these dried (give the oils a week or two to dry) I masked the struts off and used French clear doped linen from Mister Kit to hand paint all of the strut binding tapes.
Next came the hardest part of any WW1 model in my opinion, attaching the upper wing to the struts. I started by super gluing the wing to the center section cabine struts and making sure the leading edge was square until they dried. For some reason my upper wing was slightly warped, but I figured that the struts would hold everything in the correct alignment. I ran into trouble trying to place the inner interplane struts with the H shaped cross brace into place, one of the struts broke when I was trying to straighten the warped wing.
I added the outer struts then went in later and reattached the broken one. It looks ok but unfortunately once everything was dry the warp seemed to have pushed the tips of the lower wings down and gave it a droop at the lower wing tips. I could see no way to repair this without destroying the struts so went ahead and finished it off, adding rigging from Wonder Wire ceramic rigging. I used drops of Elmer's white glue to simulate the turnbuckles.
To finish it off I added the landing gear and wheels, the rear horizontal stabilizer support struts, the tail skid, photoetched lifting straps and the pilot's step. The final additions were the camera to the center of the upper wing and the painted and detailed Éclair prop with a home made logo decal.
The finished model looks nice, but due to the drooping lower wing tips I built a base to mount it to, hopefully this will make the crooked wings slightly less noticeable. I built a figure to represent Charles Nungesser using parts of 3 different figures from Eduard'sFrench air Force 1916 set. I will have to build another one of these but perhaps heat the wing to take out any warps before painting and gluing the struts into place, I can see an American SPAD XIII in the future...
My thanks go to Matt Bittner & Eduard for the review kit.
