Bullseye for Tiffie!

[Weaver]

By some means I can't remember, I got hooked into a group of modellers on Twitter who are running group builds on there, organized by one 'FredtheFoot'. The first one was any WWII single or twin-engined 'fighter' in 1/72nd scale where the kit cost you less than £10. Since I got a stack of Airfix Typhoons for about £3 each in the Home Bargains sale, and since I was itching to fit Colin Freightdog's Bullseye spinning disc bombs to something, I jumped in.

The GB posts can be found on Twitter under the hashtag #172scaleGB or by searching @fredthefoot's timeline.

Martin Sykes (@IPMSlondon) from IPMS London took part, and also produced a video of all the completed entries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN8o6ZiWcl8



The Airfix Typhoon was generally nice to build, with lots of cockpit detail that's sadly mostly invisible now. I did have to make seatbelts out of Tamiya Tape though, which makes me wonder whether, in this day and age, they could have put two seats in, one 'occupied' and one with the straps moulded on. There were a few gripes though:

Noticeable gaps at the upper wing roots which needed filling.

Noticeable gaps at the tailplane roots.

No positive location for the retractable step.

No indication of what the tropical filter was or to which versions it should be fitted.

No 'mushroom' or 'cuckoo clock' intake shield for the front of the radiator.

Questionable colour call-outs on some things (the inevitable Hu.30 for RAF cammo and Olive Drab instead of Bronze Green for the bombs and rockets).

Thick decal film that cause a few problems getting them to conform to the surface and stay on. The yellow wing leading edges were a no-hoper and I had to mask and paint them.



I elected to build the cannon bays closed, partly to keep the emphasis on the Bullseye bombs and partly in order to save time. For the same reason, I left off most of the stencilling (plus the thick film made the few I did put on a pain). I went for a heavily weathered look: if you check contemporary photos, a lot of Typhoon on the continent were looking very second-hand by the end of the war.



This is the description of the Bulleye bombs from Colin's website. I haven't been able to find out a single extra thing about them, although he did tell me at Telford that he had a load of research on them. Other things you could mount them on might be Beaufighters, Mosquitos, Barracudas, Avengers etc...

The spinning disk bomb is based on a proposal dating from August 1942 to develop a rotating bomb that could be used to attack enemy shipping or ground targets. The design offering the advantage over a conventional bomb of being able to hit tall targets when launched at level flight as opposed to a dive bomber, or as alternative to a torpedo for use in shallow water, attacking at very high speed as to not allow the target time to take evasive action.

The launch method was tested on the ground but there is no evidence of air launching trials. The disk could be made to spin by means of a small rocket turbine just before the attack. You will see on the rear of the casting there is a small amount of flashing that needs to be removed, leaving just the pipe section in place. Various sizes of disk where proposed, our set is suitable or single of twin engines fighter types in RAF service, one launcher fitted under each wing.

This set includes two disk bombs with underwing mounted launcher.

Colin's website page is here: https://www.freightdogmodels.co.uk/featured/freightdog-1-72-raf-bullseye-spinning-disk-bomb-project.html





I didn't write backstory for it (Twitter isn't about essays, even with the recent increase to 280 characters/tweet) but you can imagine these things being introduced as a special weapon for anti-shipping, and perhaps also being used for a few oddball targets along Dutch canals or German lakes.

[TallEng]

 
Nice build, though I don't remember any problems with the wings and tail planes when I built my SEA Typhoon.
Those spinning disc bombs, I wonder if they would fly like a frisbee in gentle sort of curve.....
Might make aiming a bit difficult.
Of course if you were going to use them over water I expect they would skip. (Normally I can manage between 7 and 9 skips using the standard Issue British beach stone  )

Regards
Keith

[PR19_Kit]

That's all rather splendid H, looks totally stock from above, until you notice the bombs! 

They look like a couple of Scale-o-Rama's USS Enterprises (NCC1701) slung under each wing! 

[Weaver]

I was thinking about dramatic backstories and one nice twist occurred to me: a Typhoon irmed with a pair of Bullseyes is on it's attack run against a ship, both of them spin up, but when the pilot hits the fire button, one of them doesn't release and instead jams in the carrier. A 250lb gyroscope transferring all it's angular momentum to your plane at mid-span on one wing at low-level is going to get dramatic real fast....

[PR19_Kit]

I was thinking about dramatic backstories and one nice twist occurred to me: a Typhoon irmed with a pair of Bullseyes is on it's attack run against a ship, both of them spin up, but when the pilot hits the fire button, one of them doesn't release and instead jams in the carrier. A 250lb gyroscope transferring all it's angular momentum to your plane at mid-span on one wing at low-level is going to get dramatic real fast....

Good failure mode analysis there H. 

The pilots would develop very strong leg muscles in a hurry I suspect! Perhaps the emergency solution would be to jettison the entire weapon and carrier?

I wonder if they were handed, so they spun in opposite directions to reduce the torque effect during the approach?

[NARSES2]

Looks good H.

Must admit I can't remember any problems with mine, but then my general ability levels are such that I tend to put all fit issues down to me !

[Dizzyfugu]

Interesting ordnance, I did not know these yet. 

[Mossie]

Nice little subtle extra, a natural for the Tiffie since it's built like a discus thrower!

I was thinking about dramatic backstories and one nice twist occurred to me: a Typhoon irmed with a pair of Bullseyes is on it's attack run against a ship, both of them spin up, but when the pilot hits the fire button, one of them doesn't release and instead jams in the carrier. A 250lb gyroscope transferring all it's angular momentum to your plane at mid-span on one wing at low-level is going to get dramatic real fast....

Good failure mode analysis there H. 

The pilots would develop very strong leg muscles in a hurry I suspect! Perhaps the emergency solution would be to jettison the entire weapon and carrier?

I wonder if they were handed, so they spun in opposite directions to reduce the torque effect during the approach?

I guess since it's rocket powered it'd settle down quite quickly.  I guess they could be fitted with a brake and rev-limiter?

[zenrat]

I was thinking about dramatic backstories and one nice twist occurred to me: a Typhoon irmed with a pair of Bullseyes is on it's attack run against a ship, both of them spin up, but when the pilot hits the fire button, one of them doesn't release and instead jams in the carrier. A 250lb gyroscope transferring all it's angular momentum to your plane at mid-span on one wing at low-level is going to get dramatic real fast....

Good failure mode analysis there H. 

The pilots would develop very strong leg muscles in a hurry I suspect! Perhaps the emergency solution would be to jettison the entire weapon and carrier?

I wonder if they were handed, so they spun in opposite directions to reduce the torque effect during the approach?

My thinking would be to design the mountings so that sudden application of torque would cause them to fail causing the whole unit to drop free (possibly shooting forwards at an angle and removing the prop  ).

Good job H.

[NARSES2]

Explosive bolts on the "pylons"  ? You'd need to get your measurements right but it'd be a bit of a safeguard.

[Scotaidh]

That'd be an awesome weapon to put on a Whirlibomber! 

[KiwiZac]

That is weird. Somehow I missed the ordnance in your tweets and figured you were just building a Typhoon! That's wild!

[TheChronicOne]

Have a go at that!!!! Disc bombs!!!!   And man, that is a great looking build.....   really nice work.

And ol' Fred Foot is a cool dude!

[Weaver]

That is weird. Somehow I missed the ordnance in your tweets and figured you were just building a Typhoon! That's wild!

Good! That's what you were supposed to do! 

I kept the ordnance secret until the final tweet in order to create a bit more interest (note that the details of the Freightdog packet are blanked out in the sprues shot).

[Weaver]

Just taken some better pics: