DT.19 AIRLINER - from the 1967 TV Series ‘Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons’ created by Gerry Anderson
‘Captain Scarlet’ featured a lot of futuristic hardware, which was targeted by the Mysterons for destruction and reconstruction to wreak havoc on the Earth. With only the might of Spectrum and Captain Scarlet standing in their way.
The giant DT.19 Airliner is one of the more memorable ‘guest aircraft’. Somewhat implausible and ungainly the plane features heavily in the episode ‘Winged Assassin’, and there is an exciting chase where Captain Scarlet, driving an SPV, attempts to damage the undercarriage and prevent the aircraft from taking off.
I really wanted to do a believable image of the aircraft and was inspired by some of the glorious aviation art and Aurora and Revell box-art of the 1950s and 1960s. I really wanted to capture a high level of reality in the scene and treated it like a photograph with an exposure that can’t register any detail in the dark night sky. The internal lighting from the airport buildings provides most of the light. The painting follows the ‘movie law’ that road surfaces seen at night must be wet.
You get a good look at the aircraft with the SPV alongside it in the same shot so the size can be calculated. Taking the length of an SPV as 27feet, the DT.19 is 243 feet in length! A model kit in 1:1/144th scale would be 20” in length. Huge. Either white or the grey plastic. Retractable undercarriage was not a common feature on the Airliner kits, but it might be possible on a model this size.
Designer is most likely Mike Trim
What If Model KIts #18