As a modeller of 13 years, there’s absolutely no way in my mind that could be a model. It’s several orders of magnitude beyond anything I have ever seen in photographs or in the ‘flesh’ on display tables.
Just taking the close-up of the fuselage as an example (in my mind the most convincing shot). There really is no way to recreate in any reasonable scale the puckered skin, jagged holes, faded stencilling, worn flush rivets, and screw heads.
Even disregarding technical skill, there are so many tiny details that even the best modeller probably wouldn’t have the imagination to think of, let alone create. Just look at the way the Perspex of the flush rear cockpit windows (top left of the fourth picture) is not only crazed and cracked, but some of the splintered shards have slipped down behind the ones below them. As another example, look at the way the different qualities of the paint shades on the roundel have made them fade and wear to different degrees under the sandblasting conditions. The yellow has barely changed at all, the blue has mostly worn away back to the Dark Earth underneath, while the White has worn away revealing the Blue (or is that primer?) underneath.
To have that much imagination and to get it so perfectly right is more or less impossible. I grant that they could well still be old pictures, however. Still, the quality of the fuselage picture looks much too good for a shot taken 20-30 years ago?
I wonder if, had the Burma Spitfire story been accompanied with pictures of this detail and clarity, would the same torrent of disbelief and (dare I say it) on occasion cynicism still apply?
I sincerely hope this rather significant aircraft gets rescued and preserved.
(If it does turn out to be a model, I shall eat my hat! :eek:)
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