Pauls9cb

Thanks for the heads-up Troy. My local interest was for the book I published in 2008 (Beachy Head! Angels 20 - the BoB around Eastbourne). For sake of drawing a limit to the area covered, I'd restricted the book's content roughly to a radius of 10 miles from Eastbourne, which put Houndean Bottom beyond the scope of what I'd used as a limit. While contemporary pics are always the best reference, I'm sure you're aware that there'sa full colour profile of Black 6 in Kagero Topcolors 16 BoB Part II, but it's unclear where the marking data originates. Cheers - Paul

I'm always facinated by the stories of those many 20-year olds who were defending Britain from the Luftwaffe in their thoororugbred Spifires and who perished in the process. Your model is a fitting tribute to John Cutts, whose remains were not correctly identified after the BoB, but thanks to the efforts of Dilip Sarkar and Andy Saunders have since been correctly identified and accorded rightful tribute. Well done on the model. I always love a good tale to go with it. Paul Nash

Very shiny! Great model with fantastic pics. Well done!

My impression from looking at the resurrected Spits and Hurricanes that are still flying is that the forward manifol exhaust stays pretty much the shiny silver colour of the original s/s, while the aft exhaust stubs get all the carbon deposits from start up, causing them to blacken and also to take on that silvery/blluey/purpley/reddish hue that s/s can show when continually subject to hot gas and carbon. I guess there's no fixed pattern to this but experiments based on colour pics would be a good shout. Sorry not to be too specific. Paul

Smithy - Not a problem. I haven't read the Alex Imrie work, having done the Paul Leaman thing in my fascination with Triplanes in general. I read the Aerodrome posts with interest though. It's a confusing subject with only b&w contemporary pics to analyse. Still, the whole point of my experiment was to underline yet again my admiration for the German Ace. The plastic a.c are just bits of fun to underline the "Biggles" fascination from which lots of iis suffer. Cheers - Paul

Slightly wounded during an encounter with an RNAS pilot, Voss was soon back on duty, but went on leave until the end of June 1917 when he was briefly given temporary command of first one then another Jasta. During this period he was also seconded to Schwerin where he test fllew the Fokker Triplane prototype which probably started what became a love affair between the young pilot from Krefeld annd Fokker's Triplane design. His career took a new turn when he was given command of Jasta 10, one of the four units that made up Jagdgeschwader 1 under the command of his friend and contemporary, Manfred von Richthofen (MvR). Voss took command of Jasta 10 on 30 July 1917, just as the unit was re-equipping with the Bavarian company's sleek Pfalz DIII, which for me is one of the prettiest and most streamlined fighters of this period of WW 1, whatever its operational shortcomings. Voss appears to have found the performance of the Pfalz less suited to his flying style and it's suggested he may have flown 1370/17 on only four occasions before reverting to the Albatros DIII in which he made four further victory claims, bringing his total to 38. While better in a dive than the Albatros, the Pfalz was slower and had an inferior rate of climb compared to the V-strutter. The fact that the twin Spandau machine guns were enclosed within the interplane fuselage structure may also have created some issues with the process of clearing jammed machine guns. In addition, Voss may have already been made aware that one of the two prototypes to be issued for combat evaluation was shortly coming to Jasta 10 for his use. In an old Profile Publication from the 60s/70s, I came across the above contemporary photo of 1370/17 after it had been caprtured by the British when it'd been flown by another Jasat 10 pilot, Vzfw Hecht. Right or wrong, I decided that the vertiical bands either side of the fuselage Iron Cross should be in the unit's colour of yellow. I now realise I should have coloured the backround to the cross white, rather than leaving it silbergrau. Hey ho! The eagle-eyed amongst you may also spot the elevator and rudder cables are much thicker than they should have been. In reallity, the whole rigging was finished initially in this thicker gauge material, a fact I'd not noticed until I put the Albatros and Pfalz alongside each other. Much corrective procedure and frustration later, I replaced the majority of this with more delicate rigging and decided against messing about with the aft fuselage items. This Eduard kit (rareish and of some vintage) did not include any parts for the coolant pipes to and from the engine, nor for the fuel pipes running from the upper wing tank to the engine. The former were fashioned from 30 amp fusewire and the latter from artfully-bent thin copper wire. Perhaps forgiveable in a kit this old but it shouldn't happen with modern kits in this scale. Sometime between the last days of August and early September, the F.1 triplane in which Voss would gain his last 10 victories and meet his death was delivered to Jasta 10. I used an Eduard weekend kit for the F.1 103/17, suitably-decorated with the face on the cowling and the khaki drab stripes over the pale blue undercoat. I decided to try out the GasPatch Spandaus instead of the kit ones and found these to be very good though also very delicate. I managed to break off the ring sights which I replaced with some fine brass wire, bent (almost) to shape. I also added some seat belts and the cowling retaining wire around the aft portion of the cowling. I'd decided that both 102/17 and 103/17 had slightly different lower cowl structures compared with the production run machines, as detailed in Paul Leaman's wonderful book on the Triplane, a modification that was easy with a strip of plastic and a bit of filler - not that this is very visible in my pictures. Perhaps controversially, I decided that there's insufficient evidence that either the cowling or the rudder of 103/17 were painted yellow, preferring khaki drab for the cowling and white for the rudder. As you can probably see, the upper surfacce stripes are painted with the hairy stick in my interpretation of the patterns shown in contemporary photos. So, as they used to say at the end of the Disney cartoons at the cinema when I were a lad -"That's all, folks!" Apart from one final shot just to reinforce the point of this lengthy post. I hope you've been amused by it. Paul

Fascinated by the exploits of Leutnant der Reserve Werner Voss during his short but active life flying various German scouts on the Western Front during 1916/1917, I decided some time back that the appearance of a 1/48 scale model of the pilot reflecting the well-known photo of him in front of the early Fokker Triplane in which he met his end offered 2 interesting departures for me in my erratic modelling hobby. First it gave me the chance to try to improve my figure painting skills (poor at best) and secondl,y it offered me the chance to buils a trio of the scouts he flew, decorated with my interpretation of their colour schemes and markings. The Albatros DIII flown by Voss (while he was comanding Jasta 5 from May 1917 to end July 1917) has been well documented and modelled over time. I've no doubt that Voss flew the earlier Albatros DII, as well as the Halberstadt scout, but I was unable to find sufficient research data on their appearance to warrant adding theses to the project. Nevertheless, I decided the DIII was a worthwhile starting point, since he made claims for as many as 10 Allied aircraft while flying this machine and a replacement after the first was damaged in combat. This was my first experiment with wood grain decals which turned out reasonably well after a few false starts. After researching the contemporary photos of this a/c for clues to the actual colour patterns on the wings, I decided to follow the general and learned opinion of Dan San Abbott in this area, interpreting as I went along, so it ended up as my view, right or wrong. I had intended to use some GasPatch turnbuckles to add to the detail in the rigging department. Sadly my fingers and eyesight prevented this, and my rigging thread was too thick to connect through the eyeholes, so I did without. These 1/48 scale Eduard kits are generally pretty good all round, despite fumble fingers like mine being prone to snapping or losing some of the more delicate parts. However, one gripe that I've aired before with some of the German kits with wing radiators is that no effort was made to include the coolant pipework to and from the rad and the Mercedes engine. A strange omission for a part of the structure that's very viisible on the real aiircraft, so I decided to correct this with some 30 amp fuse wire, suitably bent and glued with cyano. More amusement to follow in Part 2. Comments and criticisms always appreciated. Paul

That's a wonderful model with very credible wood-graining, which can be an art form all on its own. Don't beat yourself up about the rigging. I've just completed 3 of Eduard's German WW1 subjects and made a right pig's ear of the rigging on one of these which meant stripping all the rigging down and starting again, with all the accompanying frustrations of drilling/filling holes and various patch-ups on the paintwork. By comparison, yours looks pristine. Paul

Hi CC - I looked at the engine replica article on the n zealand Vintage Aviator website. They have a movie there showing the test run on their replica where it looks like some aluminium piping rather than steel, so I guess Dural may be ther best bet. Contemporary colour photos would help of course but fat chance of that I guess. There was (maybe still is) the URII motor ( no 2478) from MvR's 425/17 at te IWM, but I've only seen an old b&w photo (ref IWM Q31461) where these pipes look like weathered aluminiun. Cheers - Paul

Just a rivet counting comment on most Tripes Oberursel radials. With the exception of F1 103/17 (Voss pre production a/c) most Tripes didn't have copper/brass feed pipes leading to the cylinder heads. Voss' aircarft uniquely (I stand to be corrected) had a caprured Le Rhone radial which did have copper pipes in this area. Fokker's Oberursel was effectively a copy of the Le Rhone radial in most other areas and profit-conscious Anthiny Fokker missed very few tricks when it came to maximisung the bottom line. Easily corrected if you feel strongly about it. Paul

White 4 came down on 30/9/40 about 1,000 yards from my house on the edge of the village of East Dean and an old chum of mine (sadly died about 4 years ago) was one of 2 10 year olds who saw the a/c in trouble and beat the local bobby up to the crash site in the hope of adding to their collections of wartime bits and pieces. While this merely amplifies my interest in this particular a/c, but gives me no special knowledge of the actual colours used in its camo, I've concluded that the most likely colours on the a/c were the standard RLM 65/71/02, possiblywith some modification using field mixed colours to cover up Karl Ebbighausen's Gruppenkommandeur markings. I've got great respect for Dave Wadman's knowledge on this and other BoB LW aircraft, but I find it difficult to imagine that White 4 was subject to huge experimentation after Ebbighausen's loss. I find it easier to accept that the ground crews had plenty of work to do keeping as many a/c flying as possible, rather than spending more time on the paint finish of this a/c. As a result, I'm not convinced the the colours on the IWM exhibit are representative of the a/c's camo on 30 Sept 1940. This may not be supported either by some of the pictures available or from existing original panels from this a/c at Duxford and the Kent BoB Museum at Hawkinge. It's just my opinion for better or worse. Paul

Fantastic! Hadn't seen that Eduard had this in their catalogue. Such a pleasure to see how the instrument panel and all it's controls should look. We all tend to make do with various indifferent hand-painted IPs in various scales and it's especially nice to see the gunsight properly detailed. Looks like something even my fat fingers and poor eyesight couldn't damage too much. Thanks for sharing. Paul

Hi Crimea River - I thought it probably was W Nr 3579now based as a guest at the Heritage Hangar at Biggin Hill. I'd flipped thru the pics of this a/c on google yeaterday but couldn't find the one you have. Thanks for that. It confirms what I suspected. Cheers - Paul

Glad to see you all joining in the spirit of this. I tried hard to id the actual a/c pic that'd been the basis for some clever photo skills and a sharp sense of humour. Failed miserably but wondered if W Nr 3579 might have been the subject. Paul

Perhaps not the appropriate place for something intended to amuse. My brother sent me this photo which appealed to my strange sense of humour. It's perhaps a reality check for the Experten amongst us who often convince ourselves we know an awful lot about rge WWII GAF and Emils in particular. Perhaps a novel joint approach by Willy Messerschmitt and Daimler Benz to experiment with maple syrup as an alternative to 87 gasoline. It's all meant in the best possible taste and I hope it amuses others as it does me. Clever bit of photoshoppery by someone out there, sadly not me. Paul .