Early British Experimental Drone

[kwaterous]

So, this is my first time delving into the dark art of WHIF, figred that I might as well cmbine it with some scratchbuilding practice.

In 1946, the british air ministry decided that it's typhoon ground attack pilots were suffering too heavy of casualties. They isued a requirement for a plane... that didn't need a pilot, in other words, the world's first drone. the requirement also specified that the design should be jet powered, to increase speed. The engines to be used were the simplest type of jet-- fuelwas injected, then ignitedwithin a tube, doing away with the complicated electrical systems of aircraft such as the gloster meteor. Supermarine responded with a design considered promising, the Hornet, but because of the need for them to produce the Spitfire, production was given to other manufacturers. The drone mounted a masssive forward firing cannon for tank/train busting and had a rearwards facing machine gun for protection aganst german fighters . Initially designed with a conventional undercarriage, the aircraft was converted to a 3 skid design after engineers examined a captured exmple of the highly succesful Me-163 rocket interceptor. SInce the engineers did not have acces to the wheeled takeoff trolley of this aircraft, they assumed that it took off using the skid and designed their aircraft similarly. All of the skids were made to be shock absorbing in order to protect the complex guidace systems, but only the middel skid was retractable.

Shown is the third, and final prototype, which was identical to the Mark 1, which entered service after the end of the war in 1948, in all but markings. The type continued to serve in the ground attack role with the RAF well into the 1960s, and continued service in some air forces into the 1980s.

The pictures:

The main body was made of carved balsa, everything was blende together sing elmer wood filling putty, the the whole thing was giver several coats of my home-made Mr. Surfacer, made with standard wall painting primer, elmer wood filling putty and water. After some sanding down, I marked out th camouflage, which was adapted from the guide in the airfix 1:72 Typhoon, then painted it using kiddy acrylic paints, then sanding lightly to remove the worsrt of the brush marks. All decals were from the spares box, most coming from the Airfix Typhoon, while the Xs and the tail codes came from the Airfix Bf109E and Revell P-61A.

Comments and questons are most appreciated.

K