1/48 Tamiya Brewster B 339 Buffalo of No. 488 Sqn RNZAF, Kallang, Singapore, Dec 1941

Depicted as an aircraft operated by No. 488 Sqn RNZAF,  Kallang, Singapore, Dec 1941.

This is the Pacific Theatre Boxing of the excellent little Tamiya Buffalo Kit. The kit has a mixture of raised and recessed panel lines. I decided early on I was going to build this one straight out of the box and not get carried away. I've pretty much stuck to that.

If you've looked at some of other kits you'd know that I have a thing for RNZAF or  aircraft flown by Kiwis in the RAF. This kit comes with the decals for a aircraft in a Kiwi Sqn and it has the interesting dragon nose art, so I was always going to build this aircraft.

The Build

The kit goes together pretty well. The cockpit is quite nicely detailed  as most Tamiya kits are. The decals for the instrument panel fit well.

I had the problem with the step on the rear decking behind the cockpit, a bit of Sqn green fixed that. I did experience a small step along the rest of the fuselage join however as I was wary of this when assembling I made sure the step was on the underside of the model. Again a little bit of Squadron  green fixed that. The pics below show me going overboard with the filler. Once sanded down there virtually none of this left. 

Another area that required a bit of work was the underside on the wing section and where it joins to the fuselage. This needed bit of filler to as there was a step between the 2.  I used the cockpit decals and they look reasonably effective.

The only modifications I made were re scribing all the raised lines (well all bar 2 or 3 I missed) ,  I also scratch built a rear vision mirror because the 488 Sqn aircraft had a locally fitted rear vision mirror taken from a car. and I drilled some round sprue to make gun barrels for the wing guns.

Painting and Finishing

Tamyia included a set of canopy masks that were fun to apply but certainly did make masking the canopy and underside window easier. Nice touch Tamiya.

The kit was painted with Tamyia and Gunze Acrylics. I like Tamiya's Flat Earth (XF 52) for RAF Dark Earth. I used Tamiya Sky (XF21) for the sky 1/2 of the underside. I'm still to sure this is the right colour for RAF sky as it looks to green. But I've used it before, mainly because it seems to closely match the Sky fuselage band decals that many kit and decal manufacturers use. I also painted the fuselage band instead using the decal. I find you get a better result that way. Tamyia Flat black was used for the underside black. This sprays really well. For the RAF dark green I prefer Gunze H309. It just looks right to me.

The kit was then sealed with Pledge One Go and decals applied. They went down beautifully with no silvering. This has been the easiest decaling job I've done to date. I noticed in Mike's review he mentioned the dragon was only of the left side. I mentioned this on a NZ Aviation Forum I frequent and was told there is some evidence that it was on both side. It's a nice looking piece of art so I decided to put them on both sides.

Once decals had set, another coat of One go was put down and then an oil wash was applied. For the upper surfaces I used a mixture of raw Umber and some other browns. For the underside I used a grey wash, particularly to give a little bit of contrast on the black wing.
A coat of Gunze Flat clear was applied then a some pastel chalks for exhaust and gun stains along with the silver pencil for some scratches.

Conclusions

Good things about this kit are the decal options, the mask and it's ease of assembly. The figures are a nice bonus, unfortunately I didn't really do him justice. 

My only disappointment is the one piece canopy. It really could do with a 2 piece canopy so you could see in the cockpit.

The Pictures