The Spitfire Mk.XIV was a late war development of the Spitfire re-engined with the Griffon 65 and a five-bladed propeller. The early Mk.XIVs, up to the Mk.XIVC had the ‘high back’ fuselage common to all earlier Spitfires while later MK.XIVs had the bubble canopy. All Mk.XIVs had a strengthened broad chord tail. One of their more famous tasks was to shoot down V-1s.  

The subject of this review is the ex-FROG Spitfire MK.XIV with the high back fuselage and unclipped ‘E Type’ wing. Also included is a Feisler Fi-103, more commonly known as the V-1 "Buzz Bomb".

The construction of the Spitfire begins with a three-piece cockpit. This comprises of a control stick, floor and seat. The instructions described the colour as "grey", with no other references.

The five-bladed propeller is molded in with the spinner. A lot of cleaning up is needed to make this presentable.

The fuselage construction comes next. The fuselage sides required minimal preparation and contained fine raised detail. The exhaust pipes are molded into the fuselage sides. The cockpit interior has a small amount of detail and the colour is "Dark Sea Grey", according to the instruction sheet. I used Humbrol Dark Sea Grey. The propeller and cockpit were glued onto one side of the fuselage and then the other side was glued on. The two sides lined up nicely and only a small amount of puttying and sanding was needed.

Next the wing is built. The Mk.XIV Type E wing contains two Hispano 20-mm cannon and two 0.5 inch machine guns. These are molded into the wing and construction of the wing is straightforward. The fuselage and wings are then glued together. There is a small gap here, nothing a bit of putty won’t fix though.

The undercarriage legs are nicely done and the wheels aren’t bad either. However, the wheel wells contain no detail and there are no walls in the inside. I used plastic card to make these. Other bits and pieces were also added including the radiator-oil cooler fairings, tailwheel and ailerons.

The canopy is a bit of a let down though (a major understatement). There are two options for the canopy - either closed, which is a single piece, or opened, which is a two piece affair. All of the clear parts are distorted, thick and slightly too small. I tried to replace the canopy by using a vacuformed spitfire canopy but it did not fit. So I built the kit with the closed canopy provided. I did not bother masking it and just used a small brush to paint it.

I painted the kit in the usual dark green and ocean grey over medium sea grey camouflage pattern with light grey undersides. There were no specific references to paint colours, numbers or brands so I used other references to obtain the proper colours. Then the kit was overpainted with a semi-gloss varnish. There were decals provided with the kit, a WWII machine and a post war option. The roundels were fine but the serial letters were aqua, which I was unsure about. Therefore I obtained the decals from an original FROG Spitfire Mk.XIV and used those instead.

The V-1 is one of the best V-1s I have built and was correct in all dimensions. It had nice raised detail and the wings were not too thick (as is with the V-1 supplied with the Revell Arado AR-234). The machine on the box was illustrated with a black colour scheme so I used semi-gloss black on the kit V-1. A nice little kit. A stand is supplied that enables one to display the Spitfire giving chase to the V-1 but I chose not to use this.

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