Parrahs

A quick little build (ie not really enough meat on it for a WIP topic), so here we are... Stormartillerivagn m/43 was a Swedish assault gun built on the chassis of Stridsvagn m/41, a license built TNH, aka Panzer 38(t). The first few were built with 75mm guns, but quite quickly a 105mm gun was installed instead, and all the previously built ones re-armed to match. It soldiered on until the seventies. Not perhaps being one of the more iconic armoured fighting vehicles of the world, the kit selection in 1/72 is rather limited, but there does exist a somewhat so-so resin kit at least. Produced by Gecko Resin, which appears to be closely affiliated with Maestro Models/Tarangus/Rebell Hobby. Uneven surfaces here and there, track sections clearly showing the master to have been made mostly with some link-and-length approach (not always all that well aligned), and as for filler... ...some was needed. Base paintjob, decals are third party since the kit included none. And all finished up: Huge it isn't.

As far as I can tell the article itself only suggests that the Tp2 was used to search for survivors from the downed Tp79, not any form of SIGINT mission. A quick bit of googling in Swedish has also failed to produce any suggestions that the Tp2 was ever used for SIGINT, rather it appears to have been sued for ambulance duties. I also spotted another irregularity in the article where it's claimed that the B18 was a variant of the Ju86, which is incorrect, as it was a different (SAAB) design. The Swedish air force had a few Ju86Z as transport aircraft, while the SAAB 18 also existed in a recon variant, designated S18.

I haven't worked with those exact products myself, but enamel thinner should wipe off enamel washes. Just make sure it isn't an enamel varnish you're using, or you'll wipe that off as well.

The Swedish air force converted 17 of its P-51D to recon aircraft by adding a camera into the rear fuselage. These were flown by F21 in Luleå. As for the usage of the S26 and S31 I think these would have been purely photo recon, with larger aircraft being used for SIGINT in order to fit all the electronics and operators. Presumably due to the secretive nature of it all these were given Tp-designations , "transport", to (somewhat) hide their true purpose. The ones I know about is Tp82 (Varsity T-1), Tp85 (210 Caravelle III), the already mentioned Tp79 and the Tp52 (Canberra B.2, I'm not sure the Tp designation made that one any less suspicious) aka "The Pencil" because, well...

When they were initially purchased they had all the expected markings of a civilian aircraft. When the camouflage was applied (using automotive paints, mixed by eye to match the jungle around them) all of that was painted over, and no new markings were applied. Later on in their career they were marked on the sides with Biafran flags or roundels (varying form plane to plane perhaps) and identification codes consisting of BB-[three numbers]. As I wanted to keep the aircraft to the time frame when von Rosen flew I went without markings. Looking at the state of the decal sheet that may have been for the best from a practical standpoint as well.

I've been eyeing this kit myself, so this seems like a build to watch.

As I'm going for the early career of these aircraft, the first three raids when von Rosen was one of the pilots, there's no decals to apply and little weathering to think about either, and as such all that was left was some varnish and a bit of panel lining. And so it's done. Tail up! Gagarin helpfully dropping by to help show how large it isn't. Some more photos in the expected place:

To cut a long story (which I tried to tell the important bits of over in the build thread) a Swedish count (Carl Gustaf von Rosen) who flew in humanitarian aid during the Biafra crisis got rather upset with the Nigerian air strikes on civilians, tried to drum up international pressure against it, but when that failed he decided to do something himself instead. Something in this case meaning he bought a few MFI-9 civilian sports planes, some rocket pods form the French, had the two combined, and then talked a few Swedish pilots into helping him carry out air raids on Nigerian airfields and infrastructure. Once thus "militarised" these aircraft were nicknamed Biafra Babies, both as a reminder of the Biafran children they sought to aid and due to the diminutive size of the aircraft themselves. The build: And the result After the first few proof-of-concept attacks, these aircraft were shifted over to being flown by Biafran pilots instead and generally shifted over to "free hunt" interdiction missions. While they didn't manage to turn the tide of the war, these aircraft appear to have caused damage far beyond the very limited resources necessary to purchase (ignoring that von Rosen paid for them) keep them flying. While some did return home with a bit of extra ventilation at times and a few were destroyed on the ground by air strikes I seem to rememberer that none was ever shot down. With a pair of interdiction/strike colleagues:

Is the "ship's wheel" looking thing at the side for elevation? Seems like quite the workout to tilt that barrel.

Got the extra fuel tank in, along with a very rough centre console made out of lead. With nothing mentioned or shown in pictures I went for an aluminium tank. Last time around I also missed mentioning the spinal fillet made with plasticard, included in the kit for that very purpose. Some paint on the parts that the canopy would cover, matched kinda sorta (though somewhat over expectations really) to the available photos. MrPaint, one drop Mrp176 to two drops Mrp177 I think it was. A quick bit of panel lining wash here before the canopy was on, and that was most o the assembly sorted. At this point things sped up a good bit, as we're past "beating an ancient short run kit into shape" and on to "painting up a really small aircaft with a not terribly complex paint scheme". Belly first, nothing to go on here really beyond it being some light grey. Some time later And so on. Light green was once again two drops of Mrp177, now with one drop of Mrp223. Throughout the painting process the main gear fell off, got bent, bent back again, and so on a few times, On the plus side it's not slightly less bum-graviting than it was before. So with the propeller and rockets still not attached I think there's some hope, the latter are a lot heavier but sit with their centre of mass just slightly behind the main gear, so the proper may have enough of a lever to keep things where we want it.

So a generous amount of filler and sanding later and now the fuselage halves have agreed to kinda come to a compromise as to what aircraft they are. A side effect of that is that the ridges on top (much like those along the sides) were no longer anywhere to be seen. So some sprue was stretched, glued in place, blended in a bit with first thin cement and then Mr Surfacer before being sanded down a notch. After a quick spot of primer was tossed on it revealed itself as rather thick and excessive, but still, closer to right looking than if it simply had been missing I'd say. After a quick tough-up of various bits with the scriber (the panel lines often being somewhat shallow and indistinct) wings, fin and stabiliser was added, and then it was time for the front gear. Specifically, gouging a hole in the front fuselage for it since nothing such existed. As for the main gear legs, well, if you look closely at the aircraft end of them here You may note that the one on the right has a small knob on top that the left lacks. Seems like a bit of a mis-cast, with the knob being something you could drill a hole for in the plane to attach. With that lacking on one side I simply snipped off the knob on the other one, glued on some wire for reinforcement on the inside of them, and drilled holes for that wire in the plane. Then on they go and... oh dear. A bum dragger it is? And that despite all the work to the contrary. On the plus side putting the prop in (another hole drilled) makes it able to stand on all three legs, and that despite one of the two blades being broken. Still, as I'm currently tinkering wiht the extra fuel tank that'll sit in the passengers seat I've crammed about half a gram of lead into that one as well. Hopefully that and the whole prop together will get the nose wheel down even when the rocket pods go on. As you can see the cockpit ha also been painted, the photos I have suggest dark green for some of the babies and a kinda plywood-looking red-brown for others, so I grabbed some Tamiya hull red. I've seen no colour photos with the seats visible, so I left that grey. And with nothing for the fuel tank but its volume that'll just be a suitably sized box painted dull aluminium I think. For a bit more on the historical background I also found a short interview (in English) with von Rosen on youtube about Biafra:

Looking in Kronmärkt (Hellström & Fredin) the scheme likely used for the Do 24 (or Tp 24 as it was designated by the Swedish air force) was meant to be svartgrön (black green) W 84 on top and ljust blågrå (light blue grey) W 26 for the belly. The illustration of the base colour variant (an S 17BS of F2) shows W 84 as an olive green, perhaps a slightly greyish one , while W 26 is alight bluish grey. It's also mentioned there that F2 found the green a bit too bright, and so ended up making their own mix using 40% W 84 and 60 % plain black. Given the comments from Osprey of the Tp 24 getting a not quite standard paint scheme that mix seems like a primary suspect to me. Later in the book W 84 is now called svartgrå (black grey) and described as being slightly darker than FS 24031 and used on the top surface of seaplanes. W 26 (the standard colour for aircraft bellies in the Swedish air force at the time) is described as being a bit greener than FS 26176.

Visier on its own translates as visor, and there's a 14th century visor style specifically called klappvisier. So I don't know how appropriate the term would be for a sight of some kind but it's definitely appropriate for a folding visor.

What are those large discs (one on top of the bridge, one near the helipad), unused CIWS mounts?

That's one book added to the backlog there.

Nice texture to it.

That does sound worth looking into.

Yes, given the kind of kit it is I'm quite happy with the surface details. A bit of a touch-up with the scriber in the panel lines and it should be good to go. The longitudinal ridges on top and bottom of the rear fuselage (maybe not very visible in the photos, but it's the same affair as on the sides) are doomed though. They'll be long gone before I've filled and sanded the joint flush. We'll see what I can think of there.

So my previous build had a bit of a story to it. This one's probably more of a story with a bit of a build taped on. As for that story, it follows three different streams and eventually merge together. First there's the aircraft in question. Malmö Flygindustri's MFI-9 was a small and light little aircraft from the early sixties. It was also license built by Bölkow as the Bo 208, and SAAB ended up making a somewhat enlarged variant called Safari. A military trainer variant was also created and ten of these were rented for trials by the Swedish air force in 1966. Eventually the choice was made to buy the Scottish Aviation Bulldog instead, and the gently used aircraft were returned to MFI. The second place to start the story is with the Swedish count Carl Gustaf von Rosen. Born in 1909 he appears to have been something of the family's black sheep on account of his political views, specifically being very much not a nazi. When you're father runs a nazi party and your aunt is married to Hermann Göring that can apparently make things a bit awkward at times. Instead he took to flying (possibly inspired by his uncle in law, politics be damned), with a strong tendency to do so for what he probably considered worthy causes and often without much concern for his own well being. Starting out as a stunt pilot for a flying circus (an actual circus, not the von Richthofen kind). When Italy invaded Ethiopia he went there as an ambulance flight pilot for the red cross, and got some mustard gas burns courtesy of the Regia Aeronautica. After that war he got a civilian job with KLM. When the USSR invaded Finland he bought a DC-2, converted it to a bomber and flew one operational mission with it against the Russians. He would later help evacuate the Dutch government when Germany invaded the low countries, tried to join the RAF (apparently they didn't want to have Göring's niece around) and eventually spent the rest of the war flying for a Swedish airline company. Notable events after the war includes 11 years as the chief instructor for the Ethiopian air force, and flying the UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld around some during the Congo Crisis. Third, we have the Biafran war. Nigeria was (is?) one of those colonial patchworks, and upon its independence in the early sixties things got a bit heated, culminating in full war (civil depending on who you ask) when the south-eastern part of the country declared independence as Biafra in 1967. The old colonial power, England, ended up supporting the Nigerian government with plenty of ammunition and armoured vehicles perhaps largely to ensure BP's continued access to the oil fields near/in Biafra. The USSR saw a chance to gain some influence in the region, and supplied Nigeria with Mig-17 and Il-28 aircraft, which mostly ended up flown by various mercenaries. France thought they could perhaps also gain some influence in previously English-dominated lands, and gave some limited help to Biafra. Strange bedfellows... While Biafra had decent production of overall calories, they were heavily dependent on imports for protein. Nigeria blockaded those imports in an effort to starve out Biafra, leading to a massive famine that attracted the wrold's attention and got a number of western organisation to start flying in aid, despite attacks on these flights by the Nigerian air force. Here the streams start to merge, as one of the pilots who showed up was of course von Rosen. Being somewhat appalled by the way the famine and Nigerian air raids hit the Biafran civilian population he would at first try to get some substantial, official aid form various countries in the west, but his diplomatic efforts failed. Instead he noticed that Biafra had pilots, but at that point no aircraft. So he recommended them to try a "mini-COIN" concept, with very light aircraft flying between the treetops on lightning raids from hidden airfields in the jungle. To prove the concept he himself bought nine of the MFI-9 aircraft the Swedish air force had returned to MFI (with the intent being kept very secret), and talked a pair of Swedish pilots into helping out. The aircraft were shipped to Gabon were they were assembled, painted up, had French rocket pods installed and the passenger seat swapped for an extra 80l fuel tank (at full load these small aircraft could only barely climb up into the hot African air) before flying over into Biafra. Due to the starving children of Biafra being a major part of the pilot's motivation, and the size of their aircraft, these modified MFI-9 were called "Biafra Babies". With this and a local pilot they then carried out four "proof of concept" raids, primarily aimed at the Nigerian air force. Perhaps half a dozen aircraft were destroyed on the ground, mainly Mig-17, more damaged along with trucks, AA-sites and so on, with an important power plant and a major oil pumping station also being hit (something that struck Nigeria right in the wallet), with no aircraft lost or pilots wounded. After this the two other Swedish pilots returned home, von Rosen remained as an advisor and instructor, and another Swedish pilots showed up for a while to help keep operations going while the Biafran pilots were schooled in on the aircraft. At this point the aircraft also switched over to mostly flying "free hunts" against Nigerian ground forces just past the front lines. AT rockets are to have been used exclusively, to minimize the risk of collateral damage. In the end though a Biafra were thousands died of starvation every day could not hold off a British-backed Nigeria, and surrendered in 1970. So, on to the actual kit then. It's very much a short run affair, tooled somewhere back in the eighties. vacuform canopy, some white metal details. Luckily this included the rocket pods, despite there being no mention of Biafra on the box, since I haven't' found anything really suitable from any third party. The decal sheet also includes Biafran markings, but since these weren't added on at first and given the very yellowed sheet I'll be skipping those. Massive sprue gates, so-so details, and around 2mm thick fuselage sides. Oh my. With the gear being very much in front, the amount of nose weight recommended by the manual is... don't bother, just put a clear plug under the rear. Points for honesty I guess. Or if you absolutely must, lighten the rear as much as possible and then squeeze in as much lead as you can in the front, experienced modellers only (you can't stop me!). Doing some math on the torque balance I think I can do this, and so the carving began. The fuselage was taken form about 4.33g to just under 4g, then some pretty hefty gouges had to be taken out of the front as well to fit the engine and instrument panel. The edges of the walls were also thinned down around the cockpit (as the manual recommends) since having them be about 140mm thick in scale probably wasn't going to be the best look. After that I went back to sanding out material form the rear, until just over a fifth of the fuselage's mass had been removed altogether. With that to help aim I squeezed in about 2.5g of lead, and then added some extra white glue more or less for good luck. The red marks where to show where the engine and panel would end up touching the other half so the lead slug could be put in a suitable position. The cockpit walls are perhaps rather coarse, but the canopy seems like it'll give us some "help" there. The even rougher rear parts will be hidden by the seat and extra fuel tank. Now it's time to get a bit unconventional, and... ...glue the fuselage together before painting up the cockpit. This is because the inside edges of the fuselage floor came quite heavily chamfered from the factory, meaning I have a huge ditch in the floor to fill up. Luckily the instrument panel is easily accessible, and the pilot's seat will also be easy to install afterwards. The extra fuel tank and control stick will have to be scratch built, maybe a rear cockpit wall as well. Otherwise this will be an OOB build, or at least with nothing added. Plenty has already been removed after all.

A nice looking model of a nice looking tank.

While the continuing Su-17 releases does keep me hoping, they do seem quite determined to not release the M4 any time soon. Oh well, hopefully plenty of others have been waiting for what they are releasing.

Having recently built this kit (the as-sunk boxing at least) I can add in that the fit of things is generally really good. The instruction sheet could probably stand to be a bit larger in size though, my eyes haven't started going on me quite yet but I still thought some bits where rather on the small side for easy viewing.

Not a terrible lot going on with the paint scheme and all of eight transfers grand total (not a single stencil to be found between the kit decals and my after-market ones) so progress here was rather like a P-47 in a dive. I tried to work in some slight variation in the paint, probably leaning a bit much towards the subtle side with it. I didn't quite get the toy feeling form it on the other hand though, so perhaps it's quite enough for the unobstructed eye. The carpet monster got a few of the exhaust pipes though, and new ones were made with stretched sprue. This AMT-7 stuff is a rather neat hue. Both it and the white are Mr Paint, impossible to work with a brush but my current favourite for the airbrush. Just make sure the primer coat is solid, the solvent they use is very much on the hot side. The Balkan models decals behave quite well. Slightly fragile in return for being quite thin. Activated quickly. And then all that was left was mostly to make it look like there was a war going on. I'm usually somewhat sparse with the weathering, but with the white background things ended up somewhat harsh in appearance. Then again, I guess that'd be the case in reality too, so I'll take it with a shrug. And with that I'm finished. More photos for those so inclined can be found in what I assume is the expected place. Thanks for your support all.

A pretty quick little build of a Yak-1 mod 1942 flown by Lydia Litvyak, the first female fighter pilot to score an aerial victory and by what seems to be the most probably counts the higher scoring of history's two female aces. The kit was a pretty nice short run one with all that entails. The build process can be seen over at And so for the actual results: And finally with one of Hartmann's 109s to help with the sense of scale and whatnot.

A 1/72 tank from Takom? While this particular one doesn't entice me much at the moment, I do like the sound of that in general.