Beafighters of the Dallachy Wing

[JensOle]

Finally!

I know I have promised to release these paints for a long time. Well, here they are at last. The late war RAF CC Beaufighter scheme, decals, stencils, weathering from the harsh North Sea, individual aircraft decals have been replicated to the best of my (limited) skills.

-"PL-T" (NE164) of No 144 Sqn RAF
-"PL-O" (NE831) of No 144 Sqn RAF
-"E0-Q1" (RD136) of No 404 Sqn RCAF
-"P6-L1" (RD432) of No 489 Sqn RNZAF

This projects was a dive into a rather forgotten part of the air war over Europe and I found it very interesting to learn more about both the men, the Beaufighters and their histories, which mainly involved operations over my country, Norway. Sadly all to many of these brave men died in the final months of the war.

In memory of the brave crews of RAF Coastal Command which fought and died along the Norwegian coast during the 2nd world war. They faced very heavy German FLAK and fighter in order to bring home point blank attacks on enemy ships, often
hidden in fjords covered by steep mountain peaks.

Thanks to Terry Higgins (aviaeology.com) and the very well researched RCAF Beaufighter reference booklet, which was a great source
of detail photos and general late war Coastal Command Beaufighter knowledge.

[JensOle]

[huub vink]

Very nice JensOle! And a very good reason to give this model some flying time again, as it has been neglected by me for too long already.

Cheers,
Huub

[Ian Warren]

Very impressive and detailed and one great freeware <input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><input jscode="leoInternalChangeDone()" onclick="if(typeof(jsCall)=='function'){jsCall();} else{setTimeout('jsCall()',500);}" id="jsProxy" type="hidden">

[PRB]

Always liked the Beaufighter. It's a bad-azz looking ship, and I first became enamored with the type while reading about its exploits in the Pacific by the RAAF. Love all those twin-engine, single seat beasties of WW-II. Nice paints!

[Bomber_12th]

Excellent repaints, Jens-Ole!! I'm very, very impressed by these, and they will definitely get me back flying the Beaufighter much more again. I love all of the detailing!

[Flyboy208]

You know, I just flew it last night ... great job on the repaints Jens ! Mike

[DaveWG]

Great repaints Jens. Gets the thumbs-up from me.

[JensOle]

Thanks for the kind words :-)

Hopefully i'll get time to release my raf mustangs today as well John. We need an escort for the beaufighters!

[jankees]

all very nice, JensOle!

[JensOle]

SoH was the first site I uploaded the package to, has any noticed any problems with texture linking/wrong textures? From experience I know that errors tend to surface on a multi texture package...

[Bomber_12th]

Jens-Ole, very, very many thanks again for these superb textures! I can tell you poured a lot into them, and I absolutely love them. The 'blotchy' paint is very well done, and very accurate to how the paint finish on many aircraft looked.

Here's a few shots of "PL-T"

[JensOle]

Stunning screens John!

As I know that you know very well John, researching ww2 aircraft for the smaller decals can be very difficult undertaking.

Specially an aircraft as the Beaufighter, but it was a very educating history lesson as well and great fun. In the end I believe I got a pretty decent detail level for both stencils and decals. Fading was very heavy on these aircraft from both the harsh climate they flew in and the fact that the decals themselves evolved rather quickly as the Coastal Command Beaufighter squadrons were moved according to the major ops going on, most squadron codes were changed for each new base and many took part in D-day ops over the channel. On both of the stock short nosed birds you can see that by early 45 the D-day stripes had been painted over and new codes were introduced as the squadrons settled down at Dallachy for their final bloody battle with the Kriegsmarine along the Norwegian coast. Old codes/decals were simply overpainted and the paint area would of course not match the rest of the weathered paint. The radar equipped Beaufighters were coming mostly straight from the factory, but most if not all the pictures I have seen, shows a weathered look as well. Another interesting detail is that all of the radar equipped birds got a "1" number after the individual letter code.

Another subject is the font for the serial numbers, they show very little uniformity (as on most late war produced British aircraft) and the individual numbers had to be custom made.
Red sealant can be seen along the wing roots and the inflatable life raft cover on the left wing.