The Little World

One can only build obscure European designs from the 1930’s so long…

Eventually your gall bladder starts to complain. There is only so much weird and ugly that it can take. A French bomber in the block-of-flats style tends to stretch the imagination past the snapping point – eventually you have to return to reality and designs that were intended to fly well.

The Douglas DC-1 was a singleton – the DC-2 got to 192 examples. The DC-3/C-47 seems to have reached some 16,000. The look of the thing, as well as the flying characteristics, show that it was a bird that was destined to succeed.

This, in spite of the decision to leave open wheel wells. Where other designers thought they had to attach doors to struts and make complex clamshells under the nacelle, Douglas just left an open bay. That’s 32,000 doors and actuators, lines and indicators that were not needed. And the gear legs could be made super sturdy – even in this small scale there is plenty of meat to support the airframe.

Thank goodness Italeri opted to mould the tailwheel in simple form – Czech kits of similar airframes are complex, perfectly to scale, and constantly breaking around the tailwheel strut. I’ve inserted wooden blocks in mine.