Air War - Mysteres over Mitla

 After the previous outing with SPIs Air War, John organised another Zoom session, this time with rather more players. To keep things (relatively) simple, this was another early jet cannon encounter, this time over the Mitla Pass in 1956 during the Suez crisis. Israeli paras had seized the Mitla Pass and the Egyptians sent a flight of Meteors to attack them. The Israeli top cover was a couple of Mysteres. We had no less than seven players for this, plus John running it and once again we were graced by the presence of the games original designer, David Isby, to keep us all straight.  

My home made Air War setup has expanded considerably! This was a six map sheet game, and coupled with the QRS, control sheets for six aircraft, my laptop, dice and various charts and tables, it all took up quite a bit of room. I had to use the chairs either side hold various other bits of paper as my back isn't up to standing up over a table for two hours wearing my headset.

I said the scenario was 'simple', well it isn't really. All those counters are various types of IDF ground forces blue = trucks, red = M3 halftracks, green = occupied buildings, red = quad .50 cal AA and yellow = ammo dump. The Egyptians get various amounts of VPs for destroying them. I'd actually misplaced the ammo dump, it should be up by the AA guns. 

The real complexity is the terrain. The four sheets either side of the central two are ground level 8, the four hex columns either side of the pass are ground level 12, and the base of the pass itself (where all the targets are) is level 4. So the Egyptians need to crest the hills either side of the pass, dive down and then run along the trench blowing stuff up. As we played this on 4th May, Star Wars day, it seemed entirely appropriate that we were playing a flying trench assault game - their is even a 'Death Star exhaust port' in the ammo dump.

The simplicity was mainly that we weren't using missiles and the targets are all static - much easier to hit than something flying around!

Here are the good guys, a pair of Israeli Mysteres. As I'd been practicing, I was elected to be Israeli and was paired with Nigel, whose played this much more than me. Nigel was Blue 1, I was Blue 2, and Nigel was also the IDF 'honcho', or more experienced pilot, as he was.

The Mysteres are marginally better than Meteors, they turn on a button, cruise, accelerate and dive faster and carry more ammo, but there are only two of them.

We also had Micheal manning the Israeli AA guns and John running the IDF paras as well as running the games.

The Egyptians have no less than four Meteors, Red 1 (Russell), 2 (Divid), 3 (Tim) and 4 (Chris). Russell was the CO, and had to secretly plan the attack. He opted for a cannon only attack, no bombs at low altitude. At altitude 13 they would just skim the top of the mountains before diving into the pass. They would come on two waves, R1 leading on turn 2, R2, R3 and R4 coming on in line abreast on turn 3.

Nigels brother Ian had made up these revised aircraft control sheets which I used for the IDF olanes. They are much clearer and easier to use than the supplied ones, and big enough for me to use tiddlywinks to record altitude, acceleration etc. I used my custom counters for energy, throttle, movement and flight attitude.

The assembled multitudes.

We were all tracking the progress on our own maps, so I don't have to worry too much with blurry shots like this one, but we kept Tims map pinned as the main control map. There was a lot going on so it was useful to have a master reference map.

We didnt know the Egyptian plan up front, but had ot pick a flight profile. All we knew was the Egyptians were coming from the west somewhere between altitude 9 and 61 (approx 15,000 feet). We started in the southwest quadrant at altitude 70, full throttle and a shallow dive to gain some energy. It was a bit of a gamble as the Egyptians could have come on behind us, but we were manouverable enough to  dive and turn.

We were fortunate to retain the initiative for the entire game, partly thanks to Nigels 'honcho' status. On turn 2 Red 1 appeared at the far end of the map, and far away and thousands of feet below us.

We then essentially spend several turns in a power dive to get down to the level of the Egyptians, while also accumulating a mass of energy and making turns and lateral rolls to get into position for  a high speed diving attack.

It takes a while to pull out of a steep dive, so I did a few calculations as to when I'd have to start pulling up. It would be very embarrassing to pile into the ground. The Egyptians kept reasonable formation as they chugged across our front, but Red 2 decided he wanted a bit more altitude to clear the mountains. With only 1 level of clearance it precluding them from some manouvres, particularly turns at 90 degrees, as they result in a loss of altitude. 

The Egyptians all successfully crested the mountains and went into shallow dives to target the northern convoy. Nigel and I screamed down after them. Nigel had pulled out a bit too soon and was at level 15 whereas the Egyptians were all between 10 and 12, whereas I was at 13. The range and height differential meant that Blue 1 was out of range whereas I wasn't. We'd been able to line up as we'd got behind the Egyptians as they made their attack run, so were able to line up as they moved first.

The IDF AA all missed, the Egyptians managed to hit a couple of trucks - it was a hard shot as although the planes look adjacent, they are still relatively high, so the height difference extended the range. Blue 1 was out of range of the Egyptians, but I was in medium range of Red 2 and let fly. It was a decent shot, not quite up the tail pipe, but not a deflection shot either and duly landed a hit which exceeded the Meteors damage tolerance. David failed to eject and went down in flames!

We'd been playing for two and a quarter hours at that point and it seemed a good time to stop and wash up. Tim and Russell both ran the rest of the their attack runs later, but failed to do any significant damage.

That was far more fun than the rather dry account seems. Having Nigel and David playing was really helpful as they corrected a few basic mistakes a number of us had been making around things like turning and diving. Coupled with the practice sessions I'd had before, I actually felt like I was flying the plane and had some idea of getting it to go where I wanted, rather than just randomly setting controls and hoping for the best. I think we all got a lot out of it, and David Isby commented that he was delighted we'd managed to achieve a roughly historical result.

More sessions are planned for the future, but tbh I think I'm 'Air Warred out' at that point. I may come back to it at some point, but it was an interesting intellectual challenge I felt I wanted to beat and I feel I've done that. I've got new things I want to try, and while the occasional bit of retro gaming is fun, I'd like to do some new stuff.

Air War solo training flights

 After our foray to Korea with SPIs 'Air War', there was some talk of another go, this time over Sinai in 1956 (Meteors vs Mysteres). As I had little clue what was going on in the last game, I thought I'd better practice a bit!

I added to the stuff I'd printed out for the last game with a full set of (printed) rules for flight and cannon combat as well as the data cards for Mysteres and Meteors. I also made up a battle board with four of the geomorphic air combat sheets and made some generic counters (red 1-4 and blue 1-4) plus some control counters for things like banking. 

My initial plan was to treat Blue 1 as a target drone flying across the map at 15,000 feet at constant speed 3, while Red 1 was at 16,500 feet and could practice manouvering around it and maybe set up an attack run. These are  both Mysteres which are actually pretty good early jets, very manouverable and relatively fast.

I'm just using little blue dice to track most things on the aircraft control sheets. You can just make out the aircraft attitude counters I made on the bottom right tracks - a very clever 2D display which shows both the degree of aircraft bank as well as the angle of dive or climb, including 'pull outs' and 'pull throughs' ie the top or bottom of a loop or split S.

One complication is that the movement point track has three markers on it - throttle, current MP and energy from dives. I'm just using three dice with 1,2 and 3 respectively showing, but I should probably make some specific counters for those (T,M,E or something).

Anyway, my plan of doing some gentle manouvres with Red 1 while Blue 1 chugged along steadily soon went out of the window. Blue 1 accelerated and made a hard turn to starboard (these old jets don't accelerate very fast!) which lost it both speed and altitude but put some distance between it and Red 1. Red 1 meanwhile banked to port then went into an inverted power dive which lost lots of altitude but gained lots and lots of speed and energy while heading in directly the opposite direction to Blue 1.

Blue 1 had completed a turn to port at low speed (they turn much better slowly) and was now facing Red 1. Red 1 meanwhile executed a Split S and roll and ended up facing Blue 1, albeit at much lower altitude. I'd accumulated a ton of energy in the dive, and I planned to use it to climb back up. My brain exploded at that point and I couldn't face the next few turns required for both sides to get lined up in what would almost inevitably be a head on pass with a very low probability of hitting anything. I had however learned a huge amount about the turn sequence and how manouvring worked. I needed to come back to it again and practice some more stuff. I'd really like to figure out how to do an Immelman and a barrel roll, but mainly to get a better feel of how to anticipate the position, altitude and speed of the aircraft as otherwise neither a turning fight nor boom and zoom are going to be possible. 

A few days later I set the game again with a couple of aircraft with the aim of working through more manouvres. In the interim I'd made up some custom counters to track throttle, energy and movement points as they all share the same track, and I'd colour coded and numbered the aircraft attitude counters to match the planes so I could tell which track related to which plane easily. We started off with Blue 1 and Red 1 (B1, R1) cruising along at throttle 3, MP 3. B1 at altitude 70, R1 at 75. (or 'medium low' - it affects acceleration, turn speeds etc).

This time I left B1 to just fly straight, accelerating to maximum speed but keeping straight and level. R1 wanted to try a loop (or 'wing over' as the rules have it). To execute a wingover you need to go into a type 1 (shallow) climb, then two turns in a type 2 (steep) climb, enter a pull through (ie vertical and pull the stick back) and finally the wing over which leaves you inverted and but reversed 180 degrees. It is quite a handy manouvre to practice as if you get into a pull-through, you can do an Immelman from there and choose how many points of turn (up to six) and roll you do - ideal to bounce an unsuspecting enemy. That is five moves or 12.5 seconds of real time.

Anyway, these old 1950s jets proved to be rather hard to loop in. I discovered I wasn't going fast enough to actually enter a type 2 climb! So had to level out, hit the throttle for a few turns to speed up (acceleration isn't instant as the turns are so short), and then try again. Of course what I should have done was dive first.... anyway 

I finally got to the top of the loop, meanwhile B1 had managed to fly off the far end of the board and come back on again at the bottom, barrelling along at 5 MP. At the top of the loop, I realised to my horror that my airspeed was about the reach 0 but managed to avoid stalling. Having survived, I executed the wingover and ended up inverted with an airspeed of 1, but eleven altitude levels above B1 (iirc each level is 250 feet?). 

As B1 was close by, I though I'd try and execute a pursuit.

This doesn't look too promising does it! It took me a couple of moves to turn 180 degrees by banking at 90 degrees and pulling hard Gs. I lost a bit of airspeed and altitude pulling such a tight turn but was still well above B1. Time to dive and get some energy. Diving both increased my speed to the airframes maximum, 6 (just below the speed of sound), gained energy, reduced the height difference and l

closed the gap.

It took a few turns but eventually I caught B1, and loosed off a rather hopeless medium range cannon shot which missed.

By now I'd accumulated masses of energy, so was able to pull off some very fancy manouvres. I rolled left to line up exactly with B1, my dive had actually made me undershoot the altitidude, but I was able to level off, burn some more energy to pull up a couple more altitude levels and then boost my speed using yet more energy to set up a perfect shot (above). I believe diving then pulling up right on the enemy's tailpipe is called a Yo Yo.

Point blank range with four cannon, Impossible to miss. KABOOM! goes B1.

I called it a day there as my head hurt once more, but I felt I'd got on top of the manouvre system at least. I think the main lesson was that these underpowered jets really can't do the same looping manouvres as prop planes and turning was the way to go in a cannon fight. The boost from accumulated (dive) energy from the very last engagement was a revelation however as it allowed extra manouvres at the last minute to set up really good shots.

OK, feel a bit better prepared for our next team outing now. I'm really not sure why I'm demonstrating this level of obsession with mastering a dead air warfare system from 45+ years ago. An intellectual challenge to be beaten, or something.

Air War revisited

 There was a certain degree of chatter on the WhatsApp group about SPIs 'Air War'. I did play it a few times at the University wargames club in the early 1980s, but have little memory of it now. We agreed to set up a remote session to play through a few moves and remind ourselves of the joys (?!) of the game. At the time it was reputedly one of the most complex wargames ever designed, and long pre-dated decent computer flight simulators. 

As usual you can find the entire thing on https://www.spigames.net/ if you want to recreate that mid 1970s experience! You just need a few plain hex maps, a few aircraft counters and a printout of the aircraft control sheet and data sheets.

Half a dozen of us turned up (me, Nigel, Ian, Tim, Russell, John B) and we were also very fortunate to have the games original designer, David Isby, on the call. Along with working for SPI, David has written many books on military history and worked as a national security adviser on Afghanistan among other things. Amusingly he said he designed Air War when he was at Law School and before he actually learned to fly a plane.  

The others all set up their copies of the game, I just got out the aircraft data sheets and control sheets with the rules up on another monitor. The control sheets looked quite, familiar, this was coming back to me now. The idea was that we'd play through the introductory scenario side-by side as a play along (2 x Mig 15 vs 2 x F-86 in Korea). John B was lead pilot for the US and Ian D lead pilot for the North Koreans.

The fundamental premise of the game is that it tries to model the physics of flight through the application of forces in various dimensions, coupled with the flight characteristics of individual aircraft. The turns are short (2.5 seconds) so you can actually model the process of each manouvre eg you cant go into a steep climb without going into a shallow climb first, you bank before a turn, the degree of bank may result in loss of airspeed etc.

Along with the obvious things to track (altitude, speed, ammo etc) the critical track is the 'aircraft attitude' track, which is essentially a 2D representation of the different positions of the plane in three dimensions (climb,dive and bank) as well as some specific things to track the energy gained during a dive and degrees of turn accumulated. To turn one hex vertex requires you to accumulate 30 degrees of turn, and as these are jets doing 500mph through 500 foot hexes, it takes several hexes of movement to accumulate enough 'turn' to physically re-point the counter without tearing the wings off the plane.

So to pull any sort of manouvre, even just a 90 degree turn let alone an Immelman, requires a degree of forethought as it will take several (very short) moves.

The scenario starts with both flights of planes parallel (US blue, NK red), the MiGs are 1000 feet higher) and a few thousand feet apart. The MiGs have cannon, the F86s .50 cals, so the  MiGs have to get in close but hit hard, while the F86 have a much longer range, tons more ammo but dont land such heavy blows. The MiGs are more manouverable at lower altitude and the F86 superior higher up, but both planes turn much better than 1970s era jets. Neither of them is powerful enough to pull off a vertical climb though.

The aircraft data sheets list the energy costs and altitude and direction etc changes for various types of manouvre, and where appropriate, the differences any different altitiudes.  

Apologies for the blurry picture. Each plane resolves its move individually and fire is resolved at the end of all movement. There is an initiative system and a system for determining 'advantage' which allows a plane to go later in the turn. So ideally you want to have the advantage, wait for the enemy to move, and then skilfully fly your plane to within one hex of their tail and blow them out of the sky.

If only it was so easy! The US banked right and climbed gently (type I climb) to gain altitude, which cost them some speed. The NK banked left and dived to come down towards the US planes. The first turn took us about 30 minutes while we figured out how the various control settings actually moved the plane. After the first turn, things speeded up a lot as we just flicked through the rules or delved our memories as to how things worked.

We ended up with both sides at the same altitude and facing each other! Ian had obviously played this more recently than the others and showed a certain degree of competence in manouvering the MiGs, however as so often happens in this game, he slightly misjudged where the planes would end up and it was the US who got off the first shot! At medium range and maximum deflection (he'd at least planned that) they missed hopelessly though. Ideally you need to be within 2 hexes and on the targets tail and that clearly wasn't going to happen in any sensible length of time so we called it a day having exercised the major mechanisms over 90 minutes or so.

That was a lot of fun and nice to trawl through the depths of my brain for this stuff. It did remind me of the main issue I had with the game at the time, while it models the mechanics of flying very well within the limitations of carboard counters, is very hard indeed to actually fly the planes to get them where you want them to go without lots of practice in energy management and how the various numbers interact. Flying the same thing in a computer flight sim is a lot more intuitive once you understand the basic principles of powered flight. You can still mess up manouvres, overshoot, stall etc but it all happens much faster. Anyway there was a certain amount of enthusiasm to repeat the experience, but this time using planes armed with missiles, and it was great having David participate, even if he said he felt like a dinosaur talking to a load of paleontologists at times.

Amerika Bomber

 Another delightfully tasteful game, "Amerika Bomber" from Compass Games. This is designed as a solo game but we ran it as one of our online team efforts. I gather it has a very short print run and is virtually unobtainable, but Tim obtained one.

A cover worthy of Airfix Magazine, I think those are Me 264s.. The game background is an alt-hist 1947 situation - Germany has conquered Europe but the war with the USA continues, including long range bombing raids mounted from the Azores. This is basically an excuse to field various experimental aircraft (Hortens and such-like), fly them to the US, and bomb stuff. 

Its a classic bomber management game, like B17 and so on, but the detail is delightful. This is the template for an Me 364, a six engined upgrade to the Me 264, featuring such jollity as remote turrets. This is essentially a German B29/B36.  The boxes mark all the various aircraft systems, as well as airframe and wing integrity. Losing these impedes mission success or might result in the loss of the plane.

Our first missions would be in one of these, and if the crew did well, we might be allowed more advanced aircraft. The plane mainly carries conventional bombs, but has space in the bomb bay for an Atomic Bomb, should the Fuhrer grace us with one of those.

Everyone went overboard in the hat front. Jim even managed to fashion an ersatz Luftwaffe uniform with a printed out chest eagle and yellow post-it notes for Luftwaffe collar tabs. I was a lowly Feldwebel (electronic warfare and bombardier!) so just wore my Luftwaffe side cap.

I cant recall who everyone was, I think John was the pilot, Jim the co-pilot, Jerry was a gunner, perhaps Terry was the navigator? The plane had quite a big crew so many people doubled up.

The game runs very much like the solo submarine games - we roll up a mission, then have to navigate to a target and do stuff to it, and then get home. Unlike the submarine games, we aren't looking for things to attack, but trying to avoid enemy fighters and AA. Generally the missions are bombing, but can include stuff like leaflet drops, inserting an agent etc.

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Our first mission was to bomb the Bethlehem Steel Works in Pennsylvania. We had loads of air contacts in and out, carrier launched Bearcats and no less than four P-80 Shooting Stars. Contacts are resolved n the chart above - the attacking planes are assigned to one of the approaches (yellow is vertical, either climb or dive) and the turrets can only hit certain arcs so you need to assign them correctly. 

We managed to down three of the fighters and took moderate damage but made it to the target OK, hit it successfully (30% accuracy) and made it home OK. Somewhere along the way we lost our upper turret but fortunately werent bounced from that direction.

Mission two was to bomb the Big Inch Pipeline Company in Illinois, but we'd only flown two zones over the Atlantic before the plane suffered a total electrical failure and we lost all our electronic systems. We had to abort and return to base, fortunately the weather wasn't too bad so we didn't need the blind landing radar and we got down OK.

Mission three was to attack Camp LeJeune in North Carolina, again we got bounced by P80s but managed to bomb the target and return to base successfully. Our pilot (John) now qualified for a 2nd Class Iron Cross.

The following three missions were in a similar vein, although on mission five we (I) managed to miss the target completely! Sadly on mission six we were turning for home after a successful bomb run and were hit in the wing by P80s (naturally) and one of the fuel tanks caught fire! This wasn't surviveable damage but we were still over land so made an emergency landing near Boston, which was a bit bumpy but we survived. We were all then taken prisoner, for us the war was over.

That was a great game, very enjoyable and worked extremely well as a team game. It was also very timely getting shot down ten minutes before time to pack up, so if/when we do it again we can start with a fresh crew. It rattled along much faster than the U-Boat games as there were fewer contacts to resolve and the fighter and AA engagements were generally fairly short.

633 Squadron - a work in progress

 We've started work on next years WD Display Team (North) participation game.

Readers of a certain age will recall seeing this film at the cinema in the 1960s, and then endlessly repeated on TV in the 1970s. The film was based on the book of the same name, although it was moved to 1944 in the film from 1943. I saw it at the cinema when it came out with my parents, and my father (ex RAF) was very excited to see so many real Mosquitos in the air. 

It features a plucky squadron of Mosquitos being tasked to attack a secret Nazi weapons factory in occupied Norway at the end of a steep and heavily defended fjord. The final attack run scenes down the fjord of course inspired the attack run sequence on the Death Star in Star Wars.

Anyway, from the fertile minds on Mark F and John B comes our offering for the forthcoming show season, a game of 633 Squadron! We'd set up a playtesting and development session to work on it. 

While we waited for the assembled multitudes to...assemble, John entertained us with various recently repainted (but very, very old) 1/300th scale helicopters as well as his natty RAF cap.

The  game was played on this sketch layout. Nine areas down a winding fjord, and nine Mosquitos in the squadron. John had converted this to Powerpoint so we could try it out. It is a solo game with the player commanding the squadron as they commence their run down the fjord.

Anything involving the RAF is an excuse to field a ridiculous array of headgear, Jim won with his proper leather flying helmet. I'm afraid I just had my Luftwaffe side cap on backwards! Wing Commander Luddite got to go first.

The squadron moves as a group down the fjord, using the tried and tested 'play your cards right' mechanism to successfully advance to each area. This is a combination of skill and luck as you have to guess if the next card in the deck is higher (or lower) than the current one. I hit on the bright idea of it being literally 'higher' (as in pull back on the stick) or 'lower' (as in dive).

Get it wrong and one of your planes is blasted out of the sky by Flak. 

On this particular run the heroic pilots have made it all the way to area seven and only lost one plane! Typically you always lose a few.

Once you make it to the target, the surviving planes drop 'earthquake bombs' to try and dislodge the cliff face over the secret rocket base. The chance of success increases with each subsequent hit, but you generally need around four hits to drop the cliff.

After that the surviving planes attempt to escape, running the risk of being hit by Flak, intercepted by fighters or simply crashing into the vertiginous walls of the fjord. This bit was pretty lethal and I made a couple of suggestions on how to tone it down a bit without adding an extra mechanisms. In the film all the planes crash or are shot down but some of the crew survive. "You can't kill a squadron".

After we'd run it half a dozen times we had a chat about odds of various things happening and a few tweaks and how to go about modelling it. I suspect we won't be doing it with Airfix 1/24th scale Mosquitos, but between us we have a fair few Mosquitos already so I'm sure we can sort something suitable.

Just need to work on the props now and hopefully it will be ready for Partisan next year. Last weeks mountain building was part of my contribution. 

Teeny tiny decals for the Austers.

 Regular readers may recall that I painted up a couple of Austers AOPs recently (see  https://tgamesweplay.blogspot.com/2025/07/bpm-1144th-scale-auster-aop.html). At the time I bemoaned the fact that they are so tiny that none of my stock of decals would fit the fuselages.

In fact it isn't hugely obvious that they are 'improperly dressed' as the wings are so disproportionately large, the markings on those stand out and distract from the lack of fuselage markings. 

However, apparently along with being a control freak, I am something of a completionist (who knew?!) so the lack of fuselage markings has niggled. Strangely this compulsion doesn't extend to the underside of the wings but hey ho.

Anyway, riding to the rescue came John A who came up with the brilliant suggestion of using 1/300th scale decals instead of 1/144 scale ones. He duly pitched up with a pair of yellow edged roundels and a pair of stars n' bars, both Doms Decals. 

My goodness, they are tiny! 

I realised at this point that I've never applied a 1/300th decal in my life. I've always hand painted markings on 6mm vehicles and aircraft. The main thing with these ones is that they are on a continuous strip, so you need to trim them as closely as possible. 

I started with the roundels and left a bit of a gap around edge so I could grip them with my fine tweezers. 

The US markings were easier as they are a bit bigger. You can see how small they are compared to my big fat fingers, which is why I use tweezers for this sort of thing. 

In the end they went on without any fuss at all. Unlike my I-94 decals they didn't need soaking for three minutes each (!), 30 seconds did the trick. The only minor disaster was that I put one of the US ones on upside down, so it had to come off and go on again. 

If you squint very, very hard you can just see the markings on the fuselage. Even though they are largely invisible, I'm pleased to have sorted that out. While it was OK doing a few of these micro decals, I really can't imagine marking up a whole squadron of 6mm planes, so I think I'll stick to painting them where possible. Less feasible for US planes I guess. 

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'.