Finnish Bristol Bulldog Mk IVa

 

My latest subject is a Bristol Bulldog Mark IV. The Bulldog was originally built for the RAF in the late 20's and early 30s. By the early 30's the Mark IV was designed, powered by a Mercury radial engine similar to that which eventually powered the Gloster Gladiator. Finland decided to purchase a number of the Mark IVs in December of 1933, but various delays caused the agreement to be pushed to April of 1934. By February of 1935, Finland finally received its order of 17 aircraft, the last Bulldogs to be built.

The Finnish Bulldogs, BU-59 to BU-75, saw service in the Winter War of 1939 operated by LLv 26. Several aerial victories were claimed by Bulldog pilots, including the very first victory by Toivo Uuttu in BU-64. BU-68, the subject of my model, claimed two victories, one by Pentti Teva, and the other by Valio Porvari, both in December of 1939.

Bulldog BU-59 still exists and is on display in Finland!

Finnish Bulldog BU-59, this aircraft still exists in Finland!

And here it is
1

Anither view of BU-59.

For my model, I needed a couple of 1/48 scale Bulldogs and a Gloster Gladiator kit. You can find the Lindberg/Pyro/Lifelike/Inpact kits for this. Lindberg and Pyro, in particular can be found at very cheap prices. 

For reference, I found Data Plan No.2 by Alfred Granger to be very helpful. In addition, I found photos on line to be of help.

This project will take three inexpensive kits, references and a little imagination!

Building the Mark IV version of the Bulldog is actually a little more involved than it seems. At first blush it looks like you just have to slap an engine and cowling from a Gloster Gladiator onto a commonly found Bulldog Mk II, but this is not the case. The wing's plan forms are considerably different; although the actual spans are similar, the wingtips of the upper wing are totally different. The inner chord of the lower wing is not the same either. For these reasons, you have to graft new wingtips to the upper wing and add material to the chord of the lower.

Working on the new wing planforms.

After grafting the wingtips and adding the lower wings' chord, I had to scribe new aileron outlines and add some to the lower wings as well. I used Evergreen styrene strips to add the ribbing detail I had lost in the surgery. It took a bit of sanding and a few coats of primer to get the effect I wanted. One other feature is on the underside of the upper wing. You have to add a "point" adjacent to the forward cabane, similar to the rear one. I sliced the "bumps" from my donor wing and used them. This will actually be needed when you're finishing the wing assembly.

Adding rib detail.

Priming to blend everything together. Note the landing light housing on the lower starboard wing.

After being satisfied with the wings, I turned to the interior. I had no really good reference for the Mk IV's interior so I just used some artistic license and came up with an approximation. I used the Bulldog cockpit floor and control stick and the Gladiator's instrument panel, plus a few other odds and ends from the spares box and Eduard's PE harness.

Working on the interior. This is where I applied considerable artistic license.

The instrument panel is from the Pyro Gladiator.

One more item the required action was on the port side fuselage. It seem the Finnish Bulldogs had an extra bulge on the port side, like the one on the starboard side. I used laminated sheet styrene for this bulge.

The wing bracing on the  lower fuselage was added using sheet styrene again since the ones supplied with the kit seemed too thick.

Fitting the lower wing and adding the bracing.

The tail surfaces only required a little reshaping to match the Mark IV's.

Tail surfaces installed.

The fitting of the Mercury engine from the Gladiator only required a little plastic carving, it fit in pretty easily. At this point I realized that the cowling and exhausts were not an exact duplicate of the Gladiator's. The exhaust pipes seem to run from inside the cowl, not on the outside of it. I had to blend the pipes into the cowl for a better look.

Got some paint down! Also, the Mercury engine from the Gladiator is installed,

Now I had to start thinking about rigging. I used Bob's Buckle's eyelets on the lower wings, and cemented the rigging material into holes on the upper wing. For the cabane strut rigging, I drill tiny holes into the struts for the line. I also did that for the interplane struts as well.

The decals were all applied before any further construction. Also notice the cowling in now in place.

Next was the task of installing the upper wing, always a major point in a biplanes construction! I used a Lego block jig to insure proper alignment. This is always a challenge but it works out in the end.

After the wing has been installed, another subtle change has to be addressed; there is a second line running from the upper wing to the fuselage. This looks like a supplementary cabane strut but I believe these are actually fuel lines running from the wing tanks to the fuselage. At any rate, since you have two Bulldog kits, you can use the extra struts for this. 

Here you can see the upper wing installed and the rigging started.

With the wings installed and the main rigging done, I now turned to a few details I had been putting off. I had decided I wanted a ski equipped machine so I had to design the skis! No drawings are available, so I used photos of several Bulldog's to come up with my approximation. 

Another problem was the propeller. The Mark IV used a prop that was very different looking from the Mark II. I could find nothing close in my spares box. In the end I used a prop hub from a Roden 1/32 scale WWI kit and the blades from the Pyro kit. After gluing together and building up the joints with superglue, the finished result looked close. Some Finnish Bulldogs had a small spinner, but some did not, and I thought that having the exposed hub looked more interesting.

A little scratch building was needed for the ski landing gear and the prop.

Landing gear is installed and rigging almost done.

Final assembly came at last! Setting the skis turned out to be a little trickier than I expected, but they finally fell into line.

This was a fun exercise. I feel more confident in my conversion ability now. I have something a little more ambitious planned for my next build. Stay tuned!