Zvezda Fairey Battle

I picked up the Hurricane I posted last week as one component of my early war British air support, but I also wanted something a bit more time period specific. Nothing screams 'France 1940' like the much maligned Fairey Battle, and amazingly Zvezda actually make one of these.

Like the other Zvezda planes, this was a nice simple model with few parts which all fitted together well. The main thing which struck me putting it together is that this is an enormous aircraft, so big that I'm surprised it isn't in their 1/200th scale range. I haven't built one of these since the old Airfix model back in the 1970s, and then as now, I was struck by the teeny tiny engine at the front. A nice big radial or twin inline engines would have made it look much more modern and like a lot of its contemporaries.

I did this in the same disruptive pattern as the Hurricane as one of the standardised disruptive schemes. Humbrol Earth Brown and VJ Camo Green 894. A lot of the Battles seem to have been painted with night bombing ops in mind, so I did this one with a matt black underside, which looked rather jazzy and something I'm more used to seeing on Lancasters and Halifaxes.

The canopy was a bit of a pain as it is large with a lot of struts, but fortunately the panes are quite large so it wasn't too bad to paint. I didn't paint in every single one. Looking at this photo, the camo scheme does actually break up the outline of the aircraft quite well.

Markings as supplied. To my great relief there were no tail flashes, and some of the letters were supplied in a strip and not individually. I find it is really easy to make make a mess of trying put groups of individual letters. Like all my planes, done in wheels up and no prop blades mode. The model came with wheels up or wheels down undercart options, and as the prop doesn't have a spinner, it was easy to chop the blades off. 

Here it is on the way to bomb the bridges at Sedan with a Hurricane for company. The difference in size between the two is fairly obvious (and the Hurricane isn't exactly a small fighter either).

And here it is with the 1/200th Ju 88 in the distance. Not very fair to compare the two as the Ju 88 was designed as a multi role fast bomber, whereas the Battle was only a light bomber and perhaps more comparable to contemporary biplane light bombers.

I don't particularly want to go back to Arras for a third time, but I've got a couple of other 1940 BEF scenarios in mind so I expect I'll be able to work it into a game at some point.