The Little World

Of course you name a German bomber after a Scottish lady of the Georgian period who walked up Table Mountain. Perfectly normal, what?

And so they did – this Junkers-86 K passing from the South African airline to the South African Air Force when war commenced and the South Africans decided which side they wanted to be on.

Presumably they threw the German machine guns out and installed Vickers .303 version. I do not know whether they removed the German vertical bomb racks and installed horizontal ones, but it would have been at a sacrifice to tonnage carried – the bays are very small.

The lower gun position has been retained in this model but retracted as it is on its wheels. One can only speculate at the bravery of the crew member who cranked himself down with his Vickers to defend the plane, and then had to wonder whether the mechanism would let him up into the fuselage in time for a landing.

I suspect this is an old ESCI kit that has advanced through the Italeri catalogue for decades, but I think it a wonderful bargain right now. If they re-release the passenger version of it I shall buy two more.

Note: The attachment for the engines inside the cowlings is fine, but the cowling-to-nacelle joint would be very weak if done just on the mouldings. I included a couple of wooden discs to let everything have a solid surface upon which to glue things.

Decals were perfect.