The Little World

Australia is similar in many respects to Canada and the United States of America – we all established separate and specific cities for the seats of our national governments. And we elect representatives from our disparate states or provinces to go and sit there. In earlier days this was a great comfort, but now that there is air travel unfortunately the politicians return frequently to their electorates…riding in the expensive seats.

The Canadians have missed out on something, however – the Royal Air Force has flown two distinct types of aircraft adorned with the names of the US and Australian capitols: the RAF Boeing Washington 4-engined bomber – a derivative of the B-29 – that was used extensively as an ELINT plane, and the 2-engined jet bomber – the RAF English Electric Canberra. This was also spun off in the US as the Martin B-57. No RAF Ottawa bomber as yet, though with Justin Trudeau as PM there is talk of doing something underpowered and unarmed that whines but looks good in photos…

Well, with a name that honours our federal capitol – a city placed in the mountains roughly equidistant from the cities of Sydney and Melbourne – how could we not welcome the models of it. Airfix and a number of other makers have produced these in various scales and some have a staggering degree of detail available right out of the box. Of course, exhibitors at the Sandown show hardly ever do anything straight out of the box.

Even if the plane has been through the mill – this one was a fresh example out of the English Electric factory that was worked on one weekend by the apprentices at Wagga – it is still interesting and elegant to look at. Note the care and attention that the airframe riggers devote to their task of preparing the aircraft for flight. It would also be interesting to see models of the B-57 built to a similar standard to show the different tail configuration.