Thinking about this some more I reckon since no other decal manufacturer (that I know of) produces 'fade' variations on national insignia, why should you?
Sorry? That seems a rather narrow-minded approach. I would ask if no-one else is doing it, why
shouldn't it be done? Be the first, lead the way, beat other manufacturers to the idea.
So many kits come out these days that are instantly followed by a myriad of after-market products designed to make them that little bit more accurate, realistic and historically correct - so why not the roundels?
Have you actually looked at the photos of RNZAF aircraft in the Pacific and noticed the wide variation of wear and tear on the entire paintwork, including roundels? These people who do fantastic weathering jobs on the paintwork and then use the kit roundels, all nice and shiny and fresh looking, fall down at the last hurdle in my opinion when it comes to accuracy.
So if you desire a new roundel sheet with the many variations of roundel on it for the PV-1 then why go the whole way and add on a set or two of each variation - those being:
- freshly painted bold roundels for an aicraft depicted straight into service or out of a full repaint
- medium worn roundels to match a medium woen and weathered aircraft, slightlu less bold and duller in colour
- very worn roundles that has had weeks of coral dust blasting, tropical rain and heat, and petrol washes wearing the roundel paint through to the underneath paint so the factory applied star show through (wholly accurate, even examples lew in New Zealand like that!)
- roundles that had been worn and have been retouched by hand with brushes by he groundcrew. Again accurate
That would make so much more sense than only releasing bold pristine roundels in a sheet, given that so many modellers love to heavily weather their RNZAF Pacific models. The roundels would not necessarily have to just be for Venturas - Hudsons, Dakotas and Avengers should theoretically be a close match for size and definately style. That would have to be checked out of course.
As far as I see it such debate is wholly necessary for the correct portrayal of history. My impression is that those model makers who purchase after market products for kits, including decal sheets, do so because they have a lot more interest in the actual history of the aircraft type than the average modeller who will simply slap some paint on and make it in the kit supplied decals. Those modellers crave more accuracy and historic detail, just read through Britmodeller and Hyperscale Forums and this is easy to see there is a huge culture of modllers wanting more and more to get things right. And I think when they are spending more and more money on these after market products that they have the right to expect the products to have been fully researched and considered historically correct. They soon tell the world when they are not, too.
I used to be a prolific modeller. I went through all the stages from the early slap it together hand-brushed kid's kits; to more accurate 1/48 and 1/32 kits; learned to airbrush in my teens, went onto weathering, research new schemes for the kit in library books, and even bought a fair amount of resin aftermarket stuff and extra decal sheets.
I used to think then that making models more accurately based on reading history books was the best way I could try to keep the history alive.
But then I stumbled into the next dimension - the whole eye-opening rhealm of actually meeting and interviewing the real veterans first hand, and accessing their private collections of photos and their logbooks. This to me was a big step up from picking up someone else's book and copying the colour schemes they had portrayed, accurate or otherwise. When I began hearing fist hand stories and memories, and seeing proof in writing and photos, I began to realiseda lot of those published 'facts' I'd previously taken to be 'right' were in fact erroneous.
Like other serious RNZAF historians, on several occasions I have discovered that things written by modellers in the 1960's or 70's or 80's about certain aircraft are completely wrong, and that they have based all their facts on simply interpreting or misinterpretting black and white photos and forming their own opinions.
But because they then published them in a magazine or whatever back then, over the years they have been copied from there as 'the' source to the info by others, and consequently they have been made into decal sheets and the same myths have been perpetuated in the modern era through the internet and forums - these misinterpreted 'true facts' have become known to most modellers who don't do the actual research as correct, but they are wrong.
Just read through the pages of this forum and see how many members here have blown away past "facts" by producing previously unpublished photos and accounts of what the real situatiuon was. I really think, and I say this with all due modesty, that this forum has made a lot of old books and 'known facts of the time' redundant and obsolescent by disproving them as incorrect or at least narrow minded in approach.
Hence with all the poor research of the past that has come along (among all the good, accurate research i must add) these incorrect truths we end up with decal sheets with bright light "Cambridge blue" looking roundels on P-40's and Avengers, etc. Complete crap.
Go look at the Hudson, Avenger, and P-40E at Wigram to see the colour the roundels really were, wearing paint mixed to the actual specifications. Malcolm has his roundels pretty much right, virtually everyone else has made a mess of it.
And we end up with, for another example, Aeromaster releasing P-40N 'Esma Lee' with completely the incorrect serial because someone way back in time misread it in a photo and published a side view in an ancient book - no-one since had challenged that it seems whereas I have talked with the actual pilot who painted that on his aircraft, his logbook proved he never ever flew the aircraft they purport it to be, and in his photo album there are several photos of him with both Esma Lee the aircraft, and Esma Lee the real lady he named his personal fighter after. Actual first hand research that blows away the old 'known facts' as nonsense.
So when it comes to a member of the crew of NZ4512 'Slippery Sam' saying to me that the serial number was not NZ4511, I cross referenced this with the squadron's ORB, plus the logbook and diary of the actual pilot of NZ4511, and a photo on Pete Mossong's site that actually shows NZ4511 just after arriving in the Pacific without the nose name when we know Slippery Sam wore it at that time on both sides, and instantly with a bit of research I see a discrepancy. Hence the debate.
Two different decal manufacturers at least, and at least one book and one website had published with the incorrect serial. The website has since changed its captions relating to Slippery Sam, the webmaster taking on board my research. Also one of the decal manufacturers also changed to the correct serial and I am sure the other is about to, hence this thread.
I hope you can see the points here, that debate about accuracy in historical topics, whether relating to decals or anything else discussed on this board, are important. Had I never gone and talked with Skip Watson about his aircraft Esma Lee, or Bob Tilsley about Slippery Sam, no-one in the modelling world would know the truth and as Skip is no longer with us, the truth would have died with him.
I like accuracy, if i find something that doesn't add up, I question it, and bring it here for information of others and possible debate to get to the bottom of the truth. In the case of Splippery Sam I don't think there's any doubt that the serial is NZ4512, but there will always be debate over the colour of the words. I think it is a good and fair compromise for Malcolm to offer both variations, red and yellow, and mention the varying views in the decal sheet's instruction sheet, and allow the modeller to think about it and decide for themselves. They have a 50/50 chance of getting it right then. And it's more than what Aeromaster offers.
