Spitfire mkI Upper Front fuselage fuel tank

Your photograph showing the Stb side agrees with the Medway restoration of which I have only seen the Port side in photographs. I presume the surviving Mk Is were modified to the current standard until they be came out of date so an aircraft that has survived such as the IWM MkIa is now more like a Mk V.
If depicting such an aircraft then it would depend on the date you were depicting it.
I will need to look at dated photos and see when the parts such as a bulged hood, external armoured front screen and one piece front fuel tank would be in use.
Many thanks Mark 12

Any way you look at the the light armoured aluminium top tank cover of the Spitfire it looks like an after thought. It is aluminium, what 3/16″ thick, and there just to deflect head on and rear end shots. It does not fit well, overlapping on the horizontal edges at the datum longeron. I had often wondered why this was so.

Closer study, particularly those pre-war 19 Squadron press shots at Duxford, show that initially, as said, the top fuel tank was exposed to the airstream, as the oil tank under the engine. I suspect the mounting of the top tank was the same as following marks right up to Mk 47 (save for the Mk VIII) that is four ‘pip pins’.

After fitting the tank, I think a fillet ‘structure’, a hoop and two side pieces was affixed. It looks to be extremely well tailored in the images.

I suspect that initially when the Spitfire required rapid modifications for armour protection, the thick tank cover was just fixed over the top of the existing tank and the fillet deleted.

Can anybody add to or confirm this?

Mark

Am moving at the moment so all my drawings are on the Pc and boxed away but I think the resident spitstorians won,t be far away..