A literal "jack of all trades", the Beaufighter served as a ground attack fighter, a night fighter, a torpedo bomber and an anti-shipping strike aircraft. It served in Europe, the Middle East and the Far East Theaters. It's heavy armament (the MK.VI carried six wing-mounted .303 caliber machine guns and four  fuselage mounted 20mm cannons as well as eight 90lb. rockets under the wing) and long range made it a devastating weapon wherever and however it was deployed. The Italians called it "il flagello di Dio", which meant the "Scourge of God" and the Japanese referred to it as the "Whispering Death". It obviously had a profound impact on it's opponents.

Bristol designed the Beaufighter with many of the same parts used on it's elder cousin, the Beaufort. It first flew on July 17, 1939 just over eight months after design work started. Eventually 5.564 were built by the time production stopped in September 1945. Of these, 1,063 were Mk.VIs. The type was finally retired from service as a target tug in 1960. A remarkable service life for an aircraft that first flew before WWII began.

This is the first of a series of Beaufighters released by Tamiya. You get some great artwork on the boxtop and inside you'll find six sprues of crisp grey plastic with mainly recessed panel lines and one of very clear and crisp transparent parts. There are a number of options such as different style rear canopies for the gunner/navigator, underwing rockets, nicely molded radar antennae and boarding ladders and hatches. There's a decal sheet for three aircraft and a well laid out ten page instruction sheet. There are some parts not for use that'll be used on the later releases. A thimble nose and alternate spinners that are marked as not for use enable an early MK. X to be made.
 

Very nice detail and excellent fitting parts are the hallmarks of this kit. The cockpit is well done and there is a decal for the instrument panel. I choose to paint the panel and then dry bush the instrument faces and then added a drop of gloss clear to each dial face. Seatbelts are provided as decals, so you may want to substitute some PE ones for them. There's a fair bit of interior detail and with the fairly large clear areas that's a big plus. The fuselage sides have ribbing and some other detail molded on them. Some of the detail is hidden after joining the fuselage halves which go together perfectly with Tenax. 

The big wing comes in five pieces, two upper and three lower. This ensure that the proper dihedral is attained. The wing components fit together very well and with a bit of cleanup, they're seamless. The wing to fuselage fit is also very impressive with no problems to speak of. Some care must be used in removing the cowls from the sprue as they're securely attached in three places. A little attention and moderate cleanup will result in great looking parts. The undercarriage struts and their support braces make up into quite nice representations, there's some very nice detail on these parts.
 

I masked off the clear parts with bare-metal foil and sprayed the interior frame colour for which I used British interior green and then attached them to the fuselage. Since I was doing the Malta based aircraft with the desert scheme, I thought I'd try some pre-shading. I sprayed all the panel lines flat black and then sprayed on the azure blue, middlestone and dark earth camo scheme freehand to get a slight feather effect. The front of the cowlings was sprayed brass. A couple of coats of clear gloss and the model was ready for decaling. Testor's ModelMaster enamels were used for all the painting.
 

Tamiya provide you with three marking options. The version I choose to do that was based on Malta as well as a overall black nightfighter ocean grey/dark green Coastal Command aircraft. The decals went on without a problem and I sealed everything with a couple of coats of semi-gloss clear.

Tamiya's first Beaufighter was a very enjoyable build and the completed model captures the brutish utilitarian look of the real machine quite well. I highly recommend it.