The Little World

Another show find from last year’s Victorian Scale modelling exhibition, folks, but this time it was not on the bargain tables. It was firmly in the fancy kit section – an area in which I look but do not touch. However, it had the magic word on the box ; ” Canadian ” and that riveted my attention.

And it had a place in my consciousness long before the show – I have a book that details the actions of RCAF aircraft in the Second World War that includes reference to the Digby units that conducted ASW patrols off the east coast. One of them ( 747 PB-X ) sank a German U-boat off Newfoundland…and Douglas Bolo’s sank a further 3 U-boats while under American and Brazilian command…so the type has a real blood history.

The Special Hobby kit appeared in Scalemates, of course, but all efforts to find one locally were fruitless. I did consider a Special Hobby  ” Bolo At War  ” kit in a local shop before I went to the show but decided to hold fire until I saw what the eastern states scene was like. I’ve since decided that it is not a lot better than here in the west, but the fact that this Digby was sitting there made a difference. I wasn’t fussed whether it was ex-stock or ex-stash; I knew I needed it.

It has a little PE, a little resin, but mostly injected parts. The engines are one-piece injected, thank goodness.. The landing gear is sturdy enough to support the thing. Needs to be – there is a massive amount of plastic in that fuselage. There is also a  complex interior in the front of the machine and some fiddly antennae on the top – we’ll deal with that when we get there.

The only real problem to start with is to decide whether the plane will be the coastal patrol version in white or a land-based version in green/brown/black. Had I found two of them on the shelves there would be no need to decide. As it is, I am still on the lookout for another Special Hobby pre-war B-18 to use as one of the two planes that made it out of the Phillipines to Australia. It became a personal transport for one of the US Army generals, and features in several wartime photos at Australian RAAF airbases.

You know, once you start with this sort of thing, you really are going to be riding high or falling in the dust…