Rigby Boulton-Paul Defiant recolor

[rockpaperscissor]

After a fairly long lapse I decided to recolor and build another vintage Rigby airplane. Rigby's simple and colorful paper model kits were featured in Sunday newspapers across the country during WWII. The Defiant's publication date was Sunday April 27, 1941.

The Defiant was an odd aircraft armed with four 7.7mm Browning machine guns in a rotating turret aft of the cockpit. It was effective in its intended role as a bomber interceptor, attacking its target from below. The lack of independent forward firing guns proved to be a fatal flaw when challenged by enemy bomber escort fighters however, and the Defiant was soon relegated to night fighter duties where it again found success.

When recoloring these vintage kits I try to add realism to the model while preserving the charm of the original. I maintained the incorrect camouflage pattern but replaced its garish coloring. The inaccurate markings were changed to reflect an actual aircraft. This one, N3333 flew with the RAF No.12 fighter group, No.255 squadron stationed at Kirton in Lindsey airfield, Lincolnshire in 1940.

Quite a few fitment issues came to light during the build, and I had to make corrections and reprint/reassemble most of the parts more than once, but everything should fit together well now. The recolored parts page has some additional pieces including a choice of two different turret tops, and optional filler pieces to hide the folded down wing tabs. Printing at 100% will yield a 1/60 scale model in line with the other Rigby recolors in the collection.

File awaiting approval in download section.

Enjoy!

[SteveB]

Nice job, the end result looks great. Thanks for sharing it.

[rockpaperscissor]

Thank you for your kind comment, SteveB.

[Don Boose]

Another great Rigby, Don!

Many thanks for making the model available to us.

Don

[rockpaperscissor]

Thanks, Don. I hope to see it in your squadron of classic Rigby's.

[rmks2000]

Nicely recolored. I have a number of the Rigby planes and some seem to have more realistic colors than others. I wonder if the newspaper simply didn't have the proper inks or the cost of printer setup was too much.

[rockpaperscissor]

The Sunday Funnies supplement was the only color to be found in newspapers of the time. Most of the newsprint publishers only had black ink presses. I would guess that the Sunday Funnies must have been printed at least a week earlier at America's Greatest Comic Weekly's large regional print houses with 3-color presses and then shipped the supplement to all the newspapers for inclusion in their upcoming Sunday editions. The Funnies was one of the things that made Sunday special to me back in the day - church in the morning followed by Alley Oop, L'il Abner, The Katenjammer Kids, etc and then Sunday dinner at 1pm. Oh, how I miss the '50s.

When I was Photoshopping the Defiant, I got to thinking about how special the Sunday Comics were back in the day, and I was inspired to do another version of the Rigby P-39 using a character from one of the most popular comic strips of the day. Pictures to come soon.

[Vermin_King]

My Sundays were a bit different. We would drive two hours to church and then lunch at my grandparents. I had two hours of dissecting the paper on the way.


Looking forward to the next one

[Don Boose]

My earliest memories of paper modeling are linked to the Sunday color funnies in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. On several occasions my Mother cut out and assembled Rigby models. In mhy 80+ year old memories, they were magnificent.

Don

[CharlieC]

The British Air Ministry had a thing about turret fighters just before WW2. It was probably down to some overpromoted idiot who had fevered dreams of biplane fighters withering under a hail of fire as they attacked a turret fighter from the rear. It took the Luftwaffe exactly one attack in 1940 to figure out that the Defiant was an easy kill if attacked from the front. The Fleet Air Arm got into the act as well with a turret fighter version of the Skua dive bomber known as the Roc. The Roc was a truly awful aircraft.

I wonder if the strange colours in the printed Rigby models aren't partially a result of the inks changing colour with time.

Charlie