Category: History
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Koolhoven Fk 58 – Part Four – Quick Change Artist
Sharp-eyed readers will notice something unusual about this small Dutch fighter of 1939. It is undressing… Or rather, it is caught in between one set of colours and another. The real planes were delivered to the French air force from the Rotterdam plant of Koolhoven just prior to war with the diplomatic ruse of painting…
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Consolidated B-24 D – Part Five – Unloved 23790
I am not going to assign a position to Unloved in the various waves of USAAF bombers that hit Ploesti in Romania. There are scholarly books that can report on every ship and crew that made the raid. I am just satisfied that it has most of the salient features of that early B-24 model…
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Lockheed Ventura – Part Four – Over Holland
My determination to build this aircraft as an RCAF plane meant I did some research about it. The first author I turn to for most of my RCAF builds is Harald Skaarup – and he did not fail me. I found an overhead view of just this airplane in WW2 with a Canadian crew bombing…
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Forbidden Modelling
What an odd concept. Who can forbid scale modelling? Well, quite a few official bodies, as it happens. Try to fly a model airplane, run an R/C car or boat, or scramble about the local oval with your model tank and see what a squawk it raises. These restrictions multiply when there are clubs and…
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Historical Friends
I hope that’s right – I tried ” Hysterical Friends ” and the auto-correct passed that as well… One of the groups I belong to is called ” Historical Modelling Friends “. We meet either at the Cambridge Public Library in Floreat or at my studio in Willetton. The sessions are always modelling afternoons –…
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Fairey Battle Mk I – Part Six – Jarvis, Ontario
No 1 Bombing And Gunnery School RCAF. The Battle was used extensively in Canada as a training aircraft and target tug. Kept well away from the Luftwaffe, its only enemies on the prairies were the cold, the students, and gravity. Slow, heavy, but a good flier for limited purposes. The RCAF even fielded a variant…
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Model Car Sunday – Part Seven
The Daily Driver Does no-one have ordinary days any more? Have model car kits stopped being three-in-one? Can we not build the car our Dad drove in 1959? How about the one we drove yesterday? I do admire a good hot rod. I am in awe of the custom car that took a decade and…
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Model Car Sunday – Part Three
Local Model Car Sunday…with vehicles that really do resonate with our city and state. Not to diss the hot rodders or race car builders, but there is also a world that is average, mundane, and historically real and it can reach out to the viewer as much as the candy apple paint job or the…
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SAAB J22 – Part Three – Defender Of Neutrality
You have to give the Swedes credit for neutrality. Otherwise they might sell themselves to your enemies. Perhaps this is a little harsh on them. They have not been officially at war for over 200 years, though they were key players in Scandinavia and Middle Europe prior to that. They made a number of enemies…
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Douglas Skyray F4D – Part Three – Good For One Thing
And very good, at that. The Douglas F4D Skyray was built to intercept Soviet bombers as far away from American aircraft carriers as was possible. This was in the mid 1950’s when the threat from manned aircraft was at its height. The airframe – derived no doubt in some wise from a Lippisch design –…
The Little World 