The Little World

A surprising number of airplanes have been captured in war and returned to flying on behalf of their enemies. Some as service machines, some as decoys, and some as test beds.

This might seem to be a bonus for the people who capture the enemy’s warplanes, but remember that they also need to capture the factories that produce the engines and spare parts and they need to train their own people to fly the other side’s lost planes. And some of these may have been lost because that are lousy machines. Sometimes one might capture a bad bargain.

The use of a captured aircraft as a decoy is somewhat reprehensible until you consider what the Napoleonic navies used to do with false colours and high seas entrapment. There can never be large-scale employment of aircraft in this role as there have never been enough captured to make a difference. Still, they make an enemy distrustful of their own forces.

The test bed machines – the ones that provide an insight into the capabilities of the enemy – are the most useful ones. But as with anything, there is the point that they can only deliver so much information as dumb objects – they cannot speak for tactics or training, deployment or repair facilities. At some stage of the game they are just trophies to be displayed or trashed.

This Messerschmitt is one of the latter category – it depicts what happened to Me 109’s that fell into American hands in the last days of the North Africa campaigns. Shipped back to the US on a returning freighter, repainted into USAAF colours of Olive Drab and Neutral Grey, given a fin number, and sent out to the Army fields to give the trainee pilots an idea of what they were going to encounter. Flown to exhaustion and eventually to the scrap yard, yielding as much assumed information as they could.

At least they escaped the fate of the ones shot down in combat yet still intact enough to serve as bragging trophies at War Bond drives. A coat of Olive Drab is more dignified than propaganda signwriter’s slogans.

Note – not impressed with fancy-pants aftermarket decal packet that cost 3 x the price of the kit. SIlvered decals…Thank goodness there are not many markings.

Am impressed by the Hobby Boss value for money and sheer careful moulding.