Desert Airforce - bombers

 Along with the Hurricanes, my 6mm Desert Airforce needed some bombers. Being the desert they weren't exactly top of the priority list for shiny new stuff. I went for planes which could be used for daylight ground attack as well as operational bombing stuff.

More 1/300th scale H&R. On the left is a Blenheim IV and the on the right a Martin Baltimore (which replaced the Blenheim).

The Blenheim is a lovely little model, really very clean and quite dinky. It must have been a bit of a cramped ride as it isn't a lot bigger than a Hurricane. Easy to see how it could function as a heavy fighter as well as a light bomber.

As with the Hurricanes I did this using a temperate scheme as a template but with the green replaced with sand. A wrinkle on this one are the metal leading edges of the engine cowlings, which I picked out in gunmetal. 

The Martin Baltimore was a US built aircraft which replaced the Blenheim in the light bomber role. Like the Blenheim it is also a very dinky little plane, with a pleasing configuration. This one is also done in an RAF scheme, with hand painted roundels. It was a bit easier to paint them on the larger aircraft than the Hurricanes.

Both the Blenheim and the Baltimore have a fair amount of glazing. I painted this dark blue with some sky blue highlights. In retrospect the highlighting was probably a mistake as I picked out (some) of canopy struts in sand and there isn't much contrast between the sky blue and the struts. Oh well, it doesn't look too bad from a distance. 

Here they are patrolling the dining table on their flight stands.

This time with a Hurricane escort. You can see how small both the bombers are (although the Hurricane is also quite a large fighter).

I'm glad to have those as an addition to my desert forces, hopefully they will get to bomb something soon.