The Little World

‘Well, duh. Of course it’s a C-47, because it is a Douglas DC-3. And It’s a DC-3 because it’s a C-47.

And it’s a Vietnam-era gunship in this Airfix kit courtesy of four Air Force figures and a cargo floor that sports a number of mini-Gatling guns on stands. I’m afraid it holds little place in my collection as such, but the universality of the DC3/C-47 means that lots of other uses can be found for the kit. It’s an 60’s Airfix boxie that was a gift from my friend Paul.

As such, it has raised rivets and lowered expectations, but I remain confident that it can be turned into a reasonable model. I already have two of this type from Italeri that are excellent – serving in two different air forces. This one will eventually fly for the French Navy.

The reason for this is that I have enough spare Aéronavale decals to fit it out and there is one in a museum at Rochefort-sur-Mer to provide detailed photos. A number of images also circulate on the net so the basic scheme is well known. It is not a difficult one to mask. And the crew figures are roughly correct for French naval aviators.

The kit is…err…historical. The cockpit is mere shapes moulded into the fuselage sides – though this seems to be perfectly adequate given the tiny windows of the Douglas airliners. The French crew members will be in brown-orange flight suits that’ll allow them to be seen fairly well through the thick glazing.

The rivets are pretty evident down the rest of the plane. The scheme will be dull aluminium/white/orange so they will not be too obtrusive. The seam lines will need some work and a lot of scraping. At least the windows at the side will hold in well and are easy to mask, albeit grotesque in themselves.

In building it, I will inevitably be comparing it with the Italeri product, and probably not favourably. But I have a plan – there are several more DC3/ DC2 models I wish to build so the next one may well be a Revell version or the new-mould Airfix model that came out last year or so. I will do my apprenticeship on this one and be all the more grateful for the next one.