The first of the many

Sir Winston Churchill attributed the salvation of the British Isles to the Royal Air Force in 1941, whose pilots flew the first mark of this famous fighter. In 1981 I attribute my entire modelling hobby to this fighter as well, albeit in a much smaller scale.

Sometime in 1981 I built a 1/72 Matchbox Supermarine Spitfire Mk IX over the course of one weekend. It took me 48 hours (with breaks to sleep, eat and play) to build, paint and detail the small 20 peso kit which I bought the friday before at the local SM Shoemart toy department.

It was my favorite plane. I read all the accounts of how Spits flew themselves to battle, how pilots rode rings around the Luftwaffe against all the odds. And in our brotherly 'model wars', I fought countless dogfights with my second brother's ME109s and FW190s, ME110s and even the odd ME262, and they always gave my Spitfire a degree of respect unheard of in juvenile wargaming. I shot them all down more than once.

The Matchbox Spitfire Mark IX is a landmark in my modelling life. Much can be said about that, and none will dispute it.