Fiat G.55 Centauro Comparison Build in 1/72 Scale Part III

The Sword kits assembled well, save for gaps in the wingroots. I thinned the wing trialing edges on all four kits from the inside with files and sanding blocks.

The Special Hobby kit also had gaps at the wingroot as well as problems with seams along the wing halves caused by the resin wheelwells. The gaps along the wing leading edges were filled with superglue. I skipped the kit’s resin exhausts in favor of spares from Fine Molds Bf 109s.

The Supermodel Silurante torpedo bomber differed from a standard Centauro in several details, one of which was the deletion of the two machine guns in the upper cowl. Supermodel issued their standard Centauro kit with parts for the underwing radiators and the torpedo, so the fuselage gun troughs were filled with stretched sprue and bonded with MEK.

The final factor which made me decide to tackle the “unbuildable” Supermodel kit was the opportunity to practice scribing panel lines. Here I have reduced the chord of the wings by approximately 1 mm at the tips and 2mm at the roots, and filled the troughs at the control surfaces with stretched sprue. The horizontal stabilizer at the left shows all the detail sanded off in preparation for scribing.

An option on the Sword kit is to replace the vertical fin with a shortened version. I decided to perform this operation on one of the kits, as you can see the base will need to be trimmed and filled to blend the new fin in properly.

I cut off the Supermodel kit’s fin and replaced it with a Sword vertical tail piece instead, which is much better detailed and already has the recessed panel lines. This will also need some blending but will look a lot better than the original.

Part IV here: https://inchhighguy.wordpress.com/2023/01/06/fiat-g-55-centauro-comparison-build-in-1-72-scale-part-iv/