Attached are pictures of a scratch built 1/5th scale Supermarine
Spitfire MK 1 by an English model builder. It's hard to imagine such
infinite detail can be accomplished even with super human devotion
and dexterity. The pictures and accompanying text are by the model
maker, David Glen.
If anyone asked me why I set out to build a Spitfire in one-
fifth scale, and detailed to the last rivet and fastener, I would
probably be hard-pushed for a practical or even sensible answer.
Perhaps the closest I can get is that since a small child I have been
awe inspired by R. J. Mitchell's elliptical winged masterpiece, and
that to build a small replica is the closest I will ever aspire to
possession.
The job took me well over eleven years, during which there
were times I very nearly came to giving the project up for lost. The
sheer amount of work involved, countless hours, proved almost too
much, were it not for a serendipitous encounter at my flying club in
Cambridge with Dr Michael Fopp, Director General of the Royal Air
Force Museum in England.
Seeing the near complete fuselage, he urged me to go on and
finish the model, promising that he would put it on display. I was
flabbergasted,
for when I started I had no inkling that my work would end up in a
position of honour in one of the world's premier aviation museums.
As I write, the case for the model is being prepared, having
been specially commissioned by the museum with a case-maker in
Sweden. I have not yet seen it, but from what I hear, it is enormous!
In one respect the story has gone full circle, since it was at
Hendon where I started my research in earnest, sourcing Microfilm
copies of many original Supermarine drawings, without which such a
detailed build would not have been possible.
The model is skinned with litho plate over a balsa core and
has been left in bare metal at the suggestion of Michael Fopp, so
that the structure is seen to best advantage. The rivets are real and
many are pushed into drilled holes in the skin and underlying balsa,
but many more are actual mechanical fixings. I have no accurate
count, but I suspect that there are at least 19,000!
All interior detail is built from a combination of
Supermarine drawings and workshop manuals, plus countless photographs
of my own, many of them taken opportunistically when I was a
volunteer at the Duxford Aviation Society based at Duxford Airfield,
home of the incomparable Imperial War Museum collection in
Cambridgeshire, England. Spitfires, in various marks are, dare I say,
a common feature there!
The degree of detail is probably obsessive: The needles of
the dials in the cockpit actually stand proud of the instrument
faces, but you have to look hard to see it!
Why the flat canopy? Well, the early Mk.Is had them, and I
had no means to blow a bubble hood, so it was convenient. Similarly
the covers over the wheels were another early feature and they saved
me a challenging task of replicating the wheel castings.
The model has its mistakes, but I'll leave the experts to
spot them, as they most certainly will, plus others I don't even know
about.I don't pretend the little Spitfire is perfect, but I do hope
it has captured something of the spirit and incomparable beauty of
this magnificent fighter - perhaps the closest to a union that art
and technology have ever
come - a killing machine with lines that are almost sublime.
So, with the model now in its magnificent new home, what
comes next?
Well, I'm planning a book that will have a lot to say about
its genesis and perhaps just a little about me and those dear to me,
including a long suffering but understanding and supportive wife. And
then there's the Mustang. Yes, a 1/5th scale P-51D is already taking
shape in my workshop. How long will it take? I've no idea, but what I
am sure of is that at my age (58) I can't expect to be building many
of them!
David Glen
Whaddon, Cambridge
Dec. 06, 2006
