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TAMIYA 1:48 DEWOITINE D.520
Reviewer:
James Garnett (rec.models.scale)
Kit Review submitted:
27 June 2002
(taken
from Dave McDougall's Hasegawa kit review - Ed)
Few people have ever disputed that this neat little fighter was the best
produced in France prior to the Armistice; it was certainly the best to reach
the squadrons. Unlike so many other hopeful types which just failed to be ready
in time, the D520 made it – but only just. The great Marcel Doret did not help
when, having made a splendid first test flight, he forgot about the retractable
landing gear and put the first prototype out of action.
The five groups using this fighter in 1940 were credited with 147 kills for the loss of 85 aircraft and 44 pilots. The aircraft was well-armed with a 20mm Hispano-Suiza 404 cannon in the nose and four 7.5mm MAC1934 machine guns, in the wings.
Subsequently, the Vichy government restored the D.520 to production, 740 being built in all. In 1942, the Luftwaffe seized 411, passing many to Italy, Romania and Bulgaria. But in 1944 GC 1/8 was reformed under Doret and, after painting out the German insignia, went into action against the last German pockets of resistance in southern France.
As you would expect the kit looks as superb in the box as it’s likely to once built. Beautifully engineered – you know it’s one of those kits you could almost chuck a tube of glue into, give the box a shake, and the damn thing will fall out fully assembled!
Of course surface detail is excellent and the parts are engineered to fit better than a jigsaw – there is no flash. There are a few options in the kit that provide the modeller with a choice of versions and types to produce. But overall there are 45 parts on two sprues in dark grey plastic and a further five clear parts on a separate sprue.
The cockpit is where the assembly begins and this has enough detail in the kit to save all but the super detailer from looking elsewhere to fit out the office. The inside of the fuselage halves include raised structure, throttle and switch box details. There are also a couple of nasty ejector pin marks that are best cleaned up and filled. The floor section has rivet detail included and rudder pedals. The standard components are provided in the kit including seat, stick, instrument panel and the lantern gunsight [as a clear part]. Decals are supplied for the instrument panel but there is also raised detail, which I chose to utilise – painting the panel black and picking the dials and gauges out with grey and aluminium dry brush. The gunsight is difficult to replicate from the part that Tamiya supply, however, using some cockpit reference photos I painted the part in dark grey and made a small brass colored handle that the pilot would use. The cockpit was painted in a dark blue-grey color [Tamiya incorrectly state grey] using Xtracolor X393 which I think translates close to “midnight blue” – although different to the Humbrol color. The seat was painted in a khaki drill and the seat cushion I chose to paint in a leather color which my references indicate is correct. You’ll need to add in your harnesses and any other small cockpit details that takes your fancy.
The cockpit unit is installed into one fuselage half and these are closed to form the basic airframe shell. Next comes some fairly quick steps in assembly. The wings are split into one underwing section and two upper halves – sub assembled before affixing to the fuselage. The flaps are separate and I left these off until the end of construction before they were installed and affixed in a lowered position – although good luck finding a photo showing them deployed in the static position! There is a tiny gap to the rear of the underwing section where it meets the fuselage and some liquid filler is best used for this area. Interestingly the scribing is different on the top sides of both wings and photo references have not been able to determine whether it is a Tamiya blunder or is actually accurate so will let you decide that one – I suspect the former. On the starboard wing is a double-line of scribing just above and running parallel to the flaps but on the port wing only a single line is depicted. It is easily spotted [as I did it this way] when you have the wings sub-assembled ready to slip into the fuselage recess [and thought I had them upside down in one strange milli-moment of panic]!
The cowling and tailplanes are also added on here and present the modeller with no problems – the tailfins being already molded to the fuselage. I left the exhaust stacks off until after the rest of the model had been assembled and painted as I find it gets in the way if installed early on in construction, and hard to paint around later [especially airbrushing, although you can mask around it in isolation].
The radiator fairing is installed into the belly of the fuselage being a section hollowed out for installation in the middle of the underwing. The rear shutter can be installed open or closed and the radiator fairing itself goes in with a minimum of hassle. Viewed from front on though it looks a touch too rectangular when compared to scale drawings and photo reference.
I then installed the canopy section before painting, which is the way I tend to do my models, some others will leave these off and paint separately before installing. The rear quarter windows fit very well as does the windscreen, and the main canopy was installed last as it was in the open position, after painting around the rear windows.
Some of the landing gear was assembled and attached to the aircraft while the rest – wheels, struts, etc were painted and added afterward. There are some small ejector pin marks on the inside of the gear doors which needed cleaning up, avoiding of course removing any of the fine rivet detail.
Finally, the external detailing bits were added and the model was fully assembled ready for painting.
There is still much conjecture about the colors used by the French on their machines, so what I applied was a judgement call based on the best references I could find as well as combined with Tamiya’s own instructions and other reviews of this kit. The undersides were painted in a light blue-grey color (Xtracolor X389) and the camouflage pattern on the uppersides were Dark Khaki Green (X384), Dark Blue-Grey (X388) and a light earth (X386).
The kit comes with a few options to make the modeller who likes a few choices happy. Naturally, some will depend on what version you decide to finish the project off with at the end. Flaps are separate allowing them to be shown in the open or closed position, two sets of spinners and ploy caps are provided, the radiator outlet door can be displayed open or closed, and finally the canopy can be used to show an open or shut cockpit.
Three examples are catered for by the kit which can be reproduced by the modeller. “White 6” flown by Pierre Le Gloan of GC III/6; “Blue 2” flown by Lt. Michel Madon of GC I/3; and a captured example in German camouflage of GC II/18.
These really are a let down for the kit. They are thick, glossy and the registration of the color is not sharp at all. The thing that stands out the most is the red of the French insignia comes out almost maroon-like where it obviously needs to be more scarlet. Aeromaster and Modeldecal [if I am correct in the latter] both provide decal sheets which are recommended to replace the kit ones. They also provide you with a far more worthy choice of examples with vichy stripes. Aeromaster produce at least three different sets to use.
I chose to use one of the Aeromaster sheets which included Vichy stripes. One word of caution when applying French decals, in particular the fuselage roundel, is to check your references as some are placed directly under the cockpit and others a little further back on the fuselage. The rudder stripes on the sheet I had were oversized when applied against the rudder so these needed to be trimmed. I opted to carefully trim the width of each of the color too, by judicious cutting. In hindsight – probably using mask and applying the stripes by paint would have been a better way [with a flat white on the whole rudder as a base].
Drawings match up almost perfectly in scale measurements. There’s probably just a couple of minor question marks over the wing scribing and shape of radiator as touched on in the above paragraphs. Some areas of Tamiya’s instructions on painting colors in my view is also debatable. But other than these minor points, I’d say there was probably no other flaw in the kit!
This is truly a well engineered kit that contains some really nice detail and is an absolute joy to build. Probably one of the best kits I have produced in my short but aggressive modelling career. All I can say is go out and get one, but buy a decal sheet to replace the kit supplied ones! I’d rate this kit an 8 or 9 out of 10 – which is pretty good as I don’t think I have and ever can rate a kit 10/10!
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