Valiant Wings has just released the 26^th volume in it’s Airframe and Miniature series, which is a much expanded and revised edition of the Beaufighter book published in 2018 (Volume 14).

This new edition consists of 264 pages, including over 200 photos (of operational as well as museum aircraft), scale line drawings, color profiles, several model builds, a set of 1/48 plans and more. The contents are printed on high-quality, semi-gloss pages, with heavier stock covers. This book follows a similar format to others in the series. There is a brief publisher’s note on the first page explaining the decision to cover this topic a second time, specifically mentioning that Volume 14 has been out of print for quite some years!

As I have come to expect from the Airframe and Miniature series, the ‘preface’ is an in-depth summary of the development and deployment of the Beaufighter, within the RAF as well as Commonwealth and other countries’ Air Forces.

What is in the Box

• 5 pink injection molded plastic sprues [58 parts total]
• 1 clear sprue
• 1 decal sheet with 1 markings options & damage decals
• 1 full instruction page
• 1 FULL color box top diagram

Construction

The construction begins with the exposed Speeder engine parts. These were all airbrushed with metallic paints-Gunze & Alclad various shades. Fairly simple construction but I suggest some dry fitting before painting. The next phase I pre-painted some assemblies before construction. This is in contradiction of the sequential order of the instructions. This will pay dividends in final construction and save some messy masking. There are two colors that require paint mixing [Tamiya paint codes] which I found the darker color closely resembles Tamiya Dull Red [TS-33] which I used straight from a decanted Spray can [TS-33 ].