BPM 1/144th Heinkel He-111

 I wanted to add to my existing German medium bomber fleet, so along with the Austers,  I ordered an He-111 from BPM.

It is a pretty crude model, very similar to the APL Ju 88 I bought last year. I wasn't about to spend 16 quid(!) on a resin one, so got the cheaper one and boy does it show. The entire model is very grainy, and as with the Ju 88, comes with the fuselage in two halves and the engines in two halves.

Once assembled it is a gigantic lump of solid plastic, with some fairly unsightly mould lines, gaps etc. 

However, some filling and a large amount of sanding turned it into something far more pleasing. Being plastic, it is fairly easy to sand and I got it much smoother and eliminated the gaps with filler.

While I was at it, I added the dorsal, forward and waist MGs out of 0.5mm brass, which give it a bit more texture. Curiously the canopy has hardly any support struts moulded on (unlike the BPM  Ju 88 and Stuka) - maybe this is an older model? The windows look a bit plain anyway, so I'll have to paint those carefully.

The other annoying thing that the dorsal MG position  is actually open at the rear irl, but for some odd reason it is moulded as having a perspex cover over it. I would have been simple enough to mould it as open and I'm not about to start filing it down. I just stuck the MG barrel through the perspex.

The underside is still a bit crude, I didn't do a very good job filling around the engines, but I don't worry too much about the undersides anyway. I did add one MG to the gondola, which unlike the main cabin has quite nice little windows moulded into it.

When it is all painted up it doesn't look too bad though. I just did it in standard splinter with sky blue undersides. It is based on a real plane, but I can't recall the squadron now.

I painted on all the missing canopy struts by  hand, which was a bit fiddly but worth the effort. The asymmetrical cockpit didn't make it any easier. Once the canopy struts were dry I edged them in black with a 0.1mm micron pen to give them some contrast and depth.

Eagle eyed readers will notice that between photos the number '3' on the fuselage has mysteriously disappeared! 

I had a few decal disasters with this one. The original (Zvezda) balkan crosses disintegrated as I put them on, and the number 3s (also Zvezda) fell off overnight! The decals must have got too old to use or maybe they didn't like the remaining graininess of the surface. The yellow 'D' are Zvezda though and stuck on OK, the rest are Doms Decals.

My other decal disaster was that I usually varnish the decals to make them matt, but I think my varnish must be off or maybe I didn't shake it enough, as it left white streaks everywhere and made the decal surrounds stand out even more than usual. I'm going to have to paint around them with the base colours again. Argh!

I re-did the blacklining on the cockpit struts too and they stand out better now.  

Despite being such a rough model, it came out fine and it is a smart looking plane. Those huge wings give it a very sinister aspect, and of course they were stars of the show in the 1967 "Battle of Britain" film. It can join the Ju 88s and Dornier in my 'bomber box'. 

Zvezda 1/144th I-16 Rata

 I was a picking up some planes anyway so I thought I'd add to my early war Russian air fleet. Like the Ju 52 I had a vague idea about doing this in SCW colours, but in the end I just did it as a WW2 plane. I don't play enough SCW these days to justify getting 1/144th scale planes for it when I have loads of 6mm ones. 

There it is all finished, waiting to deal with the fascist Hitlerites. I can't believe these old clunkers were still in service in 1942 and even later in some sectors. They have a bit of a Tin Tin feel to them.

Here it is in its raw state. It is a pretty basic kit! It only had a few parts but the nose assembly was unnecessarily complicated. It went together fine though and hardly had any flash. It has lovely fine detail moulded on, perhaps too fine in the case of the MGs, radio mast etc which are so thin it is hard to see them surviving any sort of handling. 

I opted for undercarriage up. It is a bit of a scrappy assembly as I haven't got the wheels flush, but I don't bother much with the undersides in any case. I've only just noticed that there are teeny tiny MG case ejection slits moulded onto the underside of the wings. Blimey.

Although I have my 'Soviet Aces of WW2' as a reference for paint jobs, I did a bit of digging into WW2 Soviet aircraft paint schemes and the modelling consensus now is that the predominant schemes up until mid war for VVs fighters is olive green with black or dark green disruptive No brown at all! Well blow me down with a feather (bombers and assault aircraft are different). Sadly it means my Mig 3s are the wrong colour, but my Lagg 5s in their late war grey/dark grey are fine.

Anyway, it looks rather smart in green and black with the wierd loop pattern on the wings, and it really makes the decals pop.

Just to emphasise how small the I-16 is, here it is next to a Lagg (by no means the worlds largest fighter).

And here it is flying over the dining table on its 'flight stand'. I've moved over to using acrylic cups for all my planes now, they are just so much more stable than flight stands. The only exceptions are my heavy diecast planes which use their heavy duty supplied stands as long as they are stable enough. 

Not sure how much action it is going to see, but it is nice to have one 'just in case'. I'm sure I can work it into a game somehow. 

Mysterious Metal 1/144th Fw 190D

 Courtesy of" Tims Second Hand Aircraft Emporium", I acquired this metal 1/144th scale FW190. 

I've no idea of the manufacturer, but I suspect it is True North. I don't have many metal planes in my collection, and those that I do have are all second hand. The world of 1/144th scale metal aircraft is outside my knowledge as I've never bought a new one. 

It is a nice clean casting though, with a few faint flash lines which came off easily enough. No panel lines either, hurrah! The extended nose identifies this as an Fw 190D, so only really in service from mid 1944. One of the finest propeller fighter aircraft to grace the WW2 aerial battlefield, and my favourite ride in both the A and D versions in European Air War and other combat flight sims. Much harder to crash on landing than a Bf 109! And packs a bigger punch. As Oddball might say "It is a beautiful aeroplane Moriarty" 

Although it is bit hard to see in the photos, this model is so old the silver pewter has tarnished to a sort of light bronze colour. The same tarnishing effect you get on the metal on those British bombers like the Blenheim which have metal rings on the front of the engine cowling. They started metallic silver end ended up metallic bronze with exposure to air and heat, so you can paint them any colour you like! 

There is a chip out the the rear of the port wing. Battle damage or something I guess.

Anyway, here it is painted up. I went down the rabbit hole of Fw 190D colour schemes, which is apparently a model makers favourite as there were so many variations. This is the scheme on a real aircraft taken from my 'Axis Aircraft of WW2' book, a fighter from JG4 in early 1945.

I did the cockpit dark blue with a light blue highlight, which looks OK on bubble canopies. I also spent the time to do the spinner corkscrew pattern, which was a bit of a pig but came out OK. Thank you Posca paint pens.

These planes were such a dogs dinner in appearance as many of the components came pre-painted (or unpainted!) from various subcontractors and were simply bolted together before being flung into the meatgrinder of 1944 air combat. After assembly a very minimal camo scheme was applied to the upper surfaces. The main colour scheme here is light green with sprayed dapple camo in dark green on the wings and elevators, and very light dapple on the upper surface of the fuselage. 

The front of the fuselage has a sky blue  underside, while the rear part of the fuselage is light grey, as is the entire tail assembly (with a very light bit of camo on the fin). This particular fighter wing used distinctive black and white stripes on the rear of the fuselage.

By this stage the Germans generally went for white outline crosses on dark surfaces and dark crosses on light surfaces. Strictly speaking the fuselage crosses should be dark grey, but I only had black ones in stock. These are a mixture of Zvezda and Doms Decals. Fortunately the DD tail swastikas are edged in white so stand out a bit better.

Although I didn't do underwing decals, I did do the under panels in a variety of colours. The leading edge is plain metal (apparently very common), the centre panels and forward fuselage are blue, the ailerons are light green and the rear fuselage is grey.

And here it is flying across the living room looking for bombers to shoot down.

I really enjoyed researching and painting that, and although it is only a wargaming piece of very limited utility, it felt more like a modelling project. It is also nice to bring this old warhorse to life, and in fact it has already seen action as a Jabo in one of the recent Normandy games I reported on. 

BPM 1/144th scale Auster AOP

 As I was looking at some later war European scenarios I realised that my Allied forces don't have any spotter planes! These were critical for artillery observation, and with total Allied air supremacy could roam the battlefield at will seeking out unfortunate Germans to shell. BPM do these in 1/144th scale resin. 

I ordered two of them as I wanted a British one and an American one. Although the Auster is British, it is based on the American L-2 so they are very similar.

They are nice single piece resin prints with very little flash, although like many BPM resin models, they have very obvious striations or contours  on the wings although these were easy enough to sand down as they were quite fine.

They both have the weird circular hole in the bottom of the fuselage, which I discovered on reading the blurb on the website is designed to take an earth magnet. 

And here they are in their final paint schemes. I've taken to undercoating planes in grey as the large expanses of monochrome colours look better on a lighter undercoat. I'm rather pleased that the OD on the L-2 looks slightly brownish in this shot, just like the real thing in photos!

And a rather dimmer picture in artificial light.

The US one is just in plain Olive Drab, a very variable shade of paint indeed as it is just black and ochre mixed together and it fades terribly. I mixed this up from VJ Russian Uniform and VJ Bronze Green. The first batch came out too dark so I had to re-paint it and you can see in this photo that it is actually a dark green, but it changes colour in different lights.

The wing decal is from Doms Decals, but I didn't have any small enough to put on the fuselage as this plane is tiny.

I did the underside in standard US 'Neutral Grey'. It looks a bit dark in this photo but is lighter in natural light. I couldn't actually find any guidance on how to paint the underside of US spotter planes, so I used the standard USAAF scheme for aircraft in tactical paint schemes (as opposed to those in silver finish). I didn't bother with a decal on the underside.

The British Auster is done in the familiar Dark Earth/Dark Green scheme with subdued wing roundels. Like the US plane, the fuselage was far too small to accommodate any of my yellow edged fuselage decals.

Now, although some Austers had their undersides done in black or eggshell, many of them seem to have been painted in the camouflage scheme on the underside too. I assume it is because they spent a lot of time banking at low altitude, so their undersides were exposed against a terrain background. Anyway, I thought it would make a change and did the underside in camo too although I didn't bother with roundels.

Did I mention that these are tiny planes? Here they are next to a rather moderate sized Hurricane for scale. I'm amazed they managed to pack two crewmen and a load of extra radio gear in them. 

Very pleased to have done those, I'm not sure why it took me so long. 

1/144th scale Bristol Blenheims

After mentioning at a recent WW2 desert game that I could do with some more British desert aircraft,  my pal Pete very kindly printed off two Blenheim Mark 1s! I've got loads of desert fighters but I wanted something more appropriate for the bomber role than the European coloured B25s and Beaufort I occasionally press into service alongside my sand coloured B26.   

And here they both are, painted up in two different Mediterranean schemes. They are single piece resin prints so no assembly at all required (unlike the BPM planes which come as two halves and usually with separate engines etc too). They just had a few bits of flash around the wings to clean up but nothing major.

Here they are 'in progress' as I'm adding the topcoats over the grey primer layer. The STLs have very pronounced engraved panel lines, which is fine, but I know some people hate these and spend ages filling them in. Although exaggerated panel lines are popular in some parts of the modelling community, irl they are very fine and hard to see and I prefer a plain aircraft. I just painted over them and I'm not going to make any effort to shade them as they still stand out.  

This one is in a proper desert scheme based on my 'British Aircraft of WW2' and the Airfix Guide to RAF Camouflage. It is Dark Earth with the Dark Green disruptive replaced with Light Stone. I actually found this very hard to paint as I perhaps foolishly did the undercoat as sand, so had to fill in the brown in reverse. For RAF planes I usually do the Dark earth coat first, and it felt very counterintuitive.  

In principle it should have Sky Blue undersides, but the colour plate for this particular squadron showed light grey, so I did the underside grey instead.

You can see where I've got a bit too much Dark Earth in the official scheme, but it isn't hugely noticeable. The decals are mainly my I-94 RAF decals, but I had some Zvezda fuselage markings left so I used those for the squadron markings. 

The moulded panel lines came in very handy for lining up the decals as well as the dividing line between the upper and lower surfaces paint schemes, so perhaps they have some use after all. 

Here they are flying across the dining table. I've largely given up on wire stands as they are just too unstable outside solo play, and have instead adopted these rather useful acrylic cups. I still need to add some magnabase strips to the cups to hold SP markers.

I did the other Blenheim as a squadron based in Palestine (84 Squadron I think?). This had the standard green/brown disruptive but sky blue undersides. I was vaguely tempted to do the 1940 black underside bomber scheme, but that was uncommon in the Mediterranean for these aircraft types. I can use it in France 1940 as well if required as it is green/brown alongside my long suffering Fairey Battle.

I'm very pleased with those, yes they are very much Mark 1s but I'm not overly fussed about using the right versions in the right years. They will work for lots of theatres early war, and later war I've got my RAF B25s/B26s and my recently discovered Mosquito (found alongside the Gladiator I'd completely forgotten about). 

Illushin IL-4 medium bombers

 I have been looking for some 1/144th scale Soviet twin engined bombers for ages. I have a couple of 1/200th scale SB-2s, but they were already obsolete in 1941 and vanished fairly early on. I thought about getting some B-25 Mitchells as several hundred were sent via Lend Lease but really I wanted either Pe-2s or IL-4 and apparently no-one makes models of these apart from in larger scales. I was seriously considering getting a Bf-110 and converting into a Pe-2.

So imagine my delight when one of my regular eBay trawls turned up these two beauties. Not one, but two IL-4s in 1/144th! These are diecast models by Atlas(?) and came from two different shops.

This first one was just packed in a box and had obviously been on display although the undercarriage hadn't been fitted and was just loose. This one was from the french market as it is using the french spelling of Illushin on the base, and is also using the supplementary DB-3 designation.

It is in this rather jazzy three colour camo scheme with nice big red stars. There is a bit of damage to a couple of the sticking out bits but otherwise it is in good condition.

Its friend was in a proper plastic case and is in this green/green scheme and includes Guards badges on the fuselage sides, so clearly an elite VVS unit. This one is in better condition but annoyingly the turret MG hasn't been put in correctly and now it is jammed solid so I can't easily correct it. It was also missing its undercart.

All I did on both planes was attach the tail wheel, which wasn't retractable on these. I left the front undercart off as it would just get broken anyway. I'm going to keep these on their heavy duty stands as they are quite substantial models and would overwhelm my wire flight stands.

I'm very pleased indeed to have got those and I've already got a game planned which can use them. I shall continue my search for a 1/144 Pe-2. Tim said True North make one, but the True North range seems to have been sold to Old Glory UK who have no mention of them at all on their website, just boring Sturmoviks and I-16s.

3D Printed planes

 Although I swore I wouldn't paint any 15mm desert planes, Tims generous contributions of free stuff meant I actually had a substantial collection of British and Italian 1/144th scale planes, and having added a 1/144th Bf 109, I thought I might as well go the whole hog and get some more German planes.

I was actually putting in an order to Hannants for something else anyway, so I could have bought another Zvezda Stuka, but I really wanted a 1/144th Ju 88 (mine are either 1/300th or 1/200th) and I couldn't find an affordable Ju 88 at all. I'd noticed BPM do a range of 3D printed aircraft and as I was also ordering some stuff from them as well, I thought I'd give them a go.

And here they are, 3D printed Ju 87 and Ju 88. Done in desert camo to join my expanding 1/144th desert air forces. They are fairly basic wargaming models, but good enough. They are quite large pieces so striations are visible but they sanded down OK. Both planes come printed in two halves (one half of the fuselage, plus a wing etc etc), with some extra bits too. They stuck together fine though, and the join line was fairly unobtrusive and could be sanded once dry.

The Ju 87 has lovely raised supports on the cockpit canopy, which made if very easy to paint them in after doing the perspex dark blue. You can see the tail is slightly on the thick side, a result of the two halves being stuck together. Obviously they don't come with propellers, although I usually snap those off anyway, before other people do it for me by accident.

You can see the join line more on the underside, I didn't bother sanding this down as much. The wheel farings come in two halves each (why?). They stick together OK, but have no locating pins, you just have to bond them to a flat area on the base of the wing. This took me a few attempts with layers of UHU and superglue but they stuck on firmly in the end. I suppose I could have drilled in a support rod, but didn't. 

The Ju 88 is similar in construction, you can see the thickness of the tail more here. Again, the raised cockpit detail made it very easy to paint the window struts.

On this model the engines each come in two halves, but have a much bigger flat area to stick to than the Stuka wheels. It  also has this odd hole in the bottom of the fuselage. I just drilled further into it for the flight stand.

I did them both in desert camo schemes lifted from my 'Axis Aircraft of WW2 book'. They both have a dark sand base, the Ju 87 is stippled in red/brown camo and the Ju 88 is stippled in green camo (actually a unit based in Sicily). They got the North Africa white recognition bands and wing tip undersides.

Unlike kits, they don't come with any decals, and I ran out of crosses part way through - I thought I had more in stock. Fortunately I was going to Hammerheasd anyway, so I picked up a pack of I94 German 1/100 or 1/144th scale decals. These had a nice range of crosses as well as some tail swastikas, which you don't get with Zvezda kits. The Ju 88 got a swastika which would make Hitler proud, while the Ju 87 is a bit more understated. 

I think these are fine for what I intended, but in general I think I'll stick to kits for this sort of thing for now, they are decent gaming pieces though. 

A few more planes...

Tim is also having a clearout so I recently picked up some surplus  1/144th(ish) scale planes from him. 

This is the latest haul.

A rather nice diecast Hampden, complete with a very hefty flight stand. It needs it as it weighs a ton. The model is finished in night bomber camo with black undersides.

Slightly different view, as with many diecasts it has exquisite detail. Although the Hampden was mainly a 'strategic' bomber it may put in an appearance as an early/mid war medium bomber. My British two engined bomber fleet is mainly Mitchells and a Mosquito, so this will fill in a gap. 

Another lovely diecast, this time the Bristol Beaufort, predecessor to the Beaufighter. It also weighs a ton and in finished in an unusual light green/dark green scheme reminiscient of 1940 era BEF armour, with a duck egg green underside.

This was mainly used as a torpedo bomber in the war, but I won't have any great qualms about using it as a medium bomber/ground attack plane as it bears something of a resemblance to a Boston. Eagle eyed readers will note it appeared in the recent Sicily game. 

A fabulous pre-painted Kittyhawk in desert camo with sharks teeth etc. Just what my Mediterranean/Desert chaps need to supplement their Hurribombers.  This one also turned up in the Sicily game. 

This was a Gashopon model, and the first thing which happened when I  picked it up was that the tail fell off. Having stuck that back on, I tested all the other components but they seemed to be firmly in place. 

Last up is this diecast toy Fiesler Storch in desert camo. Although the wheels mark this out as a toy, it looks fine from a distance. I've also got a similar diecast RE8 in the box somewhere.

I was hoping to buy a Zvezda Storch but they were out of stock when I last looked, but this will do fine as a stand in. The main problem with these diecast toys is drilling the hole for the flight stand as the metal is quite thick, I shall do it very carefully with one of my diamond drills.

Very pleased with that lot, and I shall not doubt find some scenarios as an excuse to use them.