D
uring the spring of 1918, some
brightly coloured leviathans could
be seen of the East Anglian coast.
This was a sea monster of sorts, but
perhaps not in the mythical sense.
The F.2a lying boat was born from a Curtiss
design in America by John Porte. Porte was
a British designer working at Curtiss, when
he returned to England and joined the Royal
Naval Air Service, he took some of the H series
Curtiss boats and modiied them for use in the
European theatre. The name Felixstowe was
born due to the work of Porte being carried
out at the RNAS Seaplane Experimental Station
at Felixstowe in Sufolk. With several seaplane
stations in East Anglia, they were perfectly
positioned for missions over the North Sea,
with the main rolls including reconnaissance,
anti-submarine and anti-shipping patrols,
the F.2a’s were well suited to this with an
endurance of ten-hours light time. The pattern
of these missions were known as the ‘spider
web’. This particular aircraft is N4300, one of
thirty F.2a’s built on the Isle of Wight at S.E
Saunders ltd. It was delivered to Felixstowe on
the 16th June 1918, this would have been in astandard military paint scheme, the distinctive
blue/white geometric paint scheme was
applied at a squadron level, from images of the
Air Station, you can see at least three aircraft
with this design, possibly indicating that they
belonged to the same light, in August 1918
the RNAS lights were reconstituted into Royal
Air Force units, with N4300 being allocated
to No.230 Squadron. This speciic Felixstowe
did have a unique feature, a experimental
semaphore signalling system, it is not
known how successful this system
performed in practice.
Let’s look irst at the elephant in the
room! This is one of the largest
kits Wingnut Wings produce, the
wingspan is a colossal 91cm, this
really is something to think about if
you’re thinking of building this kit! The
kit consists of 381 injection moulded
parts with a further forty-seven photo-
etched parts, the manual is brilliant, with
photographs of the actual aircraft throughout,
and detailed CAD style drawings and
diagrams. The build starts, rather predictably,
with the interior. This is a sea of wood, lookingmore like a 1920’s yacht. Normally here, I would
describe the wood painting procedure, but
most people who build this kit would have
built at least one of Wingnut Wings other
oferings, so I assume most would be familiar
with this. The interior builds in the form of
a wooden loor and bulkheads, with seats,A Fine Felixstowe
Andrew Root
builds the 1:32
Wingnut Wings kit(^48) FELIXSTOWE F.2A EARLY WWW.MODELAIRCRAFTMAG.COM