Famous Fighters to Color, Cut Out & Fly

Commander David McCampbell led a flight of six U.S. Hellcats against a Japanese force of twenty bombers and forty fighters. It was October 24, 1944, just tour days after the American invasion of the Philippines, and McCampbell knew that the Japanese planes must not reach the American fleet supporting the invasion. Sending four of his Hellcats after the bombers, he and his wingman. Roy Rushing. took on the forty Zeros. When the combat was done, McCampbell had downed nine Zeros. Rushing scored six. and the enemy force was dispersed, lacking fuel for further battle. By the war's end McCampbell had 34 kills to his credit as the top U.S. Navy Ace. Robert S. Johnson of the 8th Air Force was thought to have been the first American to top Eddie Rick en backer's World War I score of 26 victories. It turned out that Richard Bong had accomplished the feat a few months earlier in the Pacific. By war's end Johnson shared top ace honors for the European conflict with Colonel Francis S. Gahreski, each with 28.

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Model Aircraft Monthly 2002-04

The June 1986 issue of Scale Models carried a useful article on converting KP's MiG-19 kit into its radical Chinese development, the Nanchang A-5 Fantan-A attack aircraft. Progressive upgrading has brought the Fantan up to A-5C standard, an example of which was displayed at the Paris Air Show by the China National Aero-Technology Import and Export Corporation (CATIC). I therefore seized on this opportunity to provide a detailed reference of this improved jet, parts of which (undercarriage, etc) are still applicable to the MiG-19 from which it originated. Much confusion has reigned over the designation of this ingenious extrapolation ever since the West caught sight of it in the late seventies; development must have been decidedly low-key as the initial flight took place as long ago as June 1965! Originally, and erroneously, described as the F-9 by Western sources, the designation was changed to F-6bis when its relationship to the Shenyang F-6 (MiG-19 copy) was established, until the true title of Q-5 was revealed to a group of industrialists visiting China's Nanchang factory, where production was under way. Q stands for Qiang which translates at Attack, hence the export label of A-5.

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Air Modeller 16

During the last months of the WWII, the chaotic situation of the German war effort due to the bombing campaign, damages on the industrial network, loss of territory and pressure after several years of heavy fighting meant the appearance of Luftwaffe aircraft changed a lot compared to the very clean and "serious" look of the early war. The main reason for these changes was the need to de-centralize aircraft production, with different parts of the airplane manufactured in a different factories and also pre-painted in different ways using different raw materials and colours. At same time in order to save time and take into account the very short life of combat aircraft, the need for camouflaged areas was less important on the undersides. With the need to survive the hordes of strafing allied air forces the upper surface camouflage had to be maintained as much as possible. Additionally new colours used due to this chaotic situation could appear on areas areas of the planes.

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Air Modeller 29

To begin, the first thing I did was to mark with pencil lines all the rivet lines on the aircraft and to then add the rivets following these lines with a rivetting tool. The Spitfire has many rivets but its not too difficult to do, It only requires a good dose of patience and keeping in mind the finished result. Upon finishing this. I moved onto the interior, and as I remarked in the introduction, the cockpit in resin Is excellent, but I wanted to go a little further and as I love to do interiors I set out to add the interior of the fuselage structure and the cameras. To do this it is advisable to have proper reference which Is not too difficult to find due to the popularity of the plane. Evergreen rods were used to add the interior ribs taking care to check the alignment between the two halves of the fuselage. The cameras were constructed from plastic sheet and rod. Then I just had to assemble the pieces of the resin cockpit and add to it a small console on one side which is what controls the cameras. Before all this, I had already marked the outlines of the access covers for the cameras and battery, and opened them up to show the interior. New covers were made from plastic working from my references. The rudder is also requires a small correction to its tip which needs to be more pointed, for this version of the Mk.XI. This can be done without much difficulty with a piece added and then sanded to shape.

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