Trumpeter Douglas C47 Dakota ‘Night Fright’ Airborne Legend 1:48

Building ‘Night Fright’…

The Trumpeter new tool kit of the C47A Dakota is a welcome addition to the modellers arsenal, with the 30 year old Revell kit the only other option in quarter scale. Being asked to build a scale model to represent ‘Night Fright’ by the restoration team restoring the aircraft back to flight is a huge honour. The combat history of the aircraft makes it one of the most important restoration projects in the world today.

With access to reference photos of the actual aircraft and information and advice from the team resident historian Neil Jones, this model will be the closest representation of the aircraft as she was on the 5th June 1944: D-Day. Most of the small changes and additions needed required some basic scratch building skills. These included the scratch building of the static line in the cabin, along with the first aid pouches. The aircraft first aid parachute pack and dinghy. What was the biggest challenge and something that wasn’t required for the build by the Night Fright team, but something I wanted to add were the distinctive and unusual parapack fairings and bundles that are underslung beneath the aircraft. With no set available in the UK it was going to be a big ask.

Externally there were a few minor changes, most noticeably the removal of the small air vents either side of the fuselage, just forward of the radio compartment, and the rear cabin window directly next to the cabin door. Other missing items from the kit are the side fuselage aerials and the radio aerials either side of the cupola. What was also apparent was that the colour call out, both internally and externally wasn’t correct for a D-Day aircraft, especially the engine bulkheads, and final paint scheme, which does not show the two tone green disruptive pattern that many of the aircraft had.

With all the information received and Neil at the end of an email the build commenced. Immediately the quality of detail on the external surfaces was superb, especially the in scale panels lines and the riveting across the board. Some of the initial preparation work for the build had already commenced by another modeller who unfortunately couldn’t find the time to complete it so the rear window had already been filled in and some other basic prep work had been completed. The first main job was to assemble and add the photo etch seat belts. Trumpeter provides a lovely set of photo-etch and the seatbelts are relatively easy to assemble. The instructions show them as being positioned quite unnaturally so extra time was taken to twist and pose he belts in a far more natural pose.

The cabin first aid packs and equipment pouches were scratch built with some styrene sheet and masking tape, and positioned as best as possible on the fuselage walls using the reference photos. Also scratch built at the same time was the anchor spar, that secured the static jump-line in the cabin that the paratroopers attached their ‘chutes’ to before they exited the aircraft. The static line attachment was replicated with an off cut of .02mm brass tubing in the spar and also the forward bulkhead. The rear bulkhead, that can be seen through the main cabin door also had some scratch building added, this included the jump masters headset and ‘comms’ wires. This was done with some jeweller’s wire and air-drying clay. Also scratch built using the two ‘spare’ antenna taken from the old Revell kit, were the two side aerials, the rather thick plastic aerials were removed from the teardrop fairing and replaced with some thin brass wire.

The reference photos showed that the aircraft had a large ‘parapack’ with first aid insignia sat opposite the main door, along with a yellow ‘dinghy’ pack sat against the door itself. These were scratch built using the clay, masking tape, jeweller’s wire and some spare harness buckles.

I am very lucky to have many friends in the hobby and through the Hawker Typhoon Preservation Group that I am the deputy director for. When I posed the question to Neil and a few other contacts about replicating the parapack fairings one of my friends and member of my modelling club Tangmere Sector Modellers IPMS, revealed he had recently purchased a resin 3d printer, so all he needed was a CAD drawing in STL format to be able to print the fairings. Another friend, who does some CAD design said he would be happy to create the drawings, but he needed some detailed photos and dimensions: which fortunately Neil was able to supply. The end result was a set of 6 beautifully detailed parapack fairings for the Dakota. What amazed me was not only the detail, but from a few photos and basic dimensions Keith Relleen was able to produce a CAD design in 48th scale that fitted perfectly to the contours of the kit (without even seeing the kit!). So thank you to Keith and Sean Grainger for taking this build to the next level with some bespoke additions. The actual parapacks that fit into the fairings were then ‘scratch’ built using the same clay, masking tape and 01mm wire and attached before painting with a spot of cyano glue.

With all the other sub-assemblies built and ready for priming, everything was then given a coat of MRP-084 fine surface primer (grey).

The Main ‘Office’…