JohnMacG

Make my own.... yes that's what I'll do. *I haven't previously had suitable info on there machines , but the above picss & csv should do. TIA

Make my own.... yes that's what I'll do. *I haven't previously had suitable info on there maxhines , but the above pxcvss & cxvsv should do. TIA

The Dutch East Indies Army (KNIL) used some (Puma-engine) D.VII s for some years in the 20s - anyone know of any decals (1/72) for these a/C?

There was a radial-engine P.XXv, by the now defunct Polish producer 'Hit Kit'. Only Polish markings of course. Availability? Probably only on E-bay.

If you're looking for EARLY RAAF use of the Kittyhawk by No75 Squadron over Aus/New Guinea -go for - South Pacific Air War Volume 2: The Struggle for Moresby March - April 1942. Widely available on Amazon/E-Bay Much info, pics & csvs.

I've got a couple of Potez XXVs ready to build, but the instructions all just 'dark green'. Yes, but which dark green? Now I specifically want info on French-built XXVs (not on foreign built a/c) What shade would be appropriate?

For an explanation of the changes made to the WH-3s try and find 'Air Enthusiast Quarterly' #22, which has a long article on the Duitch Martins, which explains these. Now, the Dutch were quite happy with their early Martins (WH-1s & -2s) but wanted an improved version with the ability to carry bigger bombs internally,, more range and more powerful engines. Changes to the fuselage; it was widened but only by 3" not noticeably in 1/72nd, surely? The more 'snub-nosed' bomb aimer's compartment and long glasshouse glazing are obvious but the nose turret was also 'squatter' and I THINK there were internal differences on the construction of the vertical fin and tailplanes, leading to different panel lines. Now, the wings; the centre-section seems unchanged (except for the new engines SO, all these changes seriously altered the c/g of the design, leading the major changes to the wing-sweep. It SEEMS that Martin merely wept the wing spars backward, but used the same wing ribs as on the earlier versions (changes also made to aileron cut-outs, obviously.) There's also a book by P C Boer (of course), which is the absolute 'bible' of NEI Army aviation - Aircraft of the Netherlands East Indies Army Air Corps in crisis and war times, February 1937-- June 1942 (pp560, hardback, in English). This has a LOT on the Martins. (Batavian Lion International, 2016) -

/ah......FINALLY. A Dutch Martin 139, I've been waiting c.40 years for one of these. (in the meantime we've had about 25000 P-51Ds/Spitfires/ 109s - sorry a very small rant). Does anyone know when this is due for release?

Two small points - no Vildebeests ere evacuation Malaya/Java. The Ceylon Vildebeest on its nose was probably from the local Station Flight; the VB was not a 'bomber' - the RAF classified it as a 'torpedo-bomber' - a rather different thing as far as camo goes. Now, the only pic I have the clearly shows VB undersides is one captured by the Japanese 'somewhere in SEA'. This clearly shows that whatever this a/c's undersides were, they Are Not black.

Hmmm, yes, somehow I knew it would be the ancient Frog kit. I can remember buying this when it first appeared a LONG time ago, when I was MUCH younger....... An old friend. I remember it as being qu7ite basic even for its time (1975-ish?). Those were the days before vac-form canopies, which the kit REALLY needs, and resin cockpits. There's also something wrong with shape of the fuselage in front of the windscreen, there's the cowling problem and the u/c needs some work. But, as said above, nothing that can't be fixed. Probably be cheaper to buy one of the other kits, tho'. What propted me to ask about the Ta152 in the first place is a 16-page article in 'Luftwaffe Im Focus' #29 on the Ta152H's operational career (German & English text).which corrects many myths and errors abouty the 152,s (short) career.

I see many offers on E-Bay for Revell's Ta152H kit. Is merely re-boxing of FROG's truly ancient Ta152H kit or is it something else?

A week or so ago I asked if the Valom Vildebeest kit cames with bombs; OK it doesn't. But the Valom Vincent kit does - four racks and bombs under each wing, So if you want a Vildebeest bomber, use the Vincent kit. ( It even comes with a torpedo (no rack tho'- but's not too hard to scratch bu ild) It seems that Vildebeest didn't carry both bombs and the torpedo rack. As to Vildebeest torpedo attacks I concur that only at Kota Bharu on 7th December did vildebbest use torpedos during the Malayan campaign, but I've read somewhere that the few surviving Vildebeests carried torpedos with them when they evacuated to Java, and seemingly carried out torpedo attacks on Japanese invasion convoys as they neared Java. Now colours; YEARS ago when I built the Contrail Vac-form Vildebeest, I gave it Dk earth/Dk Green upersurfaces with Lt Earth/Lt Green shadow-shading, over Lt blue Undersides (probably the same blue seen on the colour Blenheim pics) and have never seen pics to contradict this. This was after all the official RAF camo scheme drawing for the VB. Black undersides? Hmmmm, yes- that makes sense, they were used as night bombers after all, But none of the Malayan Vildebeest pics I have show this conclusively. it could just be the very bright Malayan sun leaving very dark shadows underthe wings One last point - the only two pic I have a VBs captured by the Japenese, possibly in Java, both show light-coloured undersides, both have torpedo racks and neither has wheel spats. (Both are from more-or-less 'head on', so neither show any seials or codes.) I hope m ramblings here don't bore too many people!

Has anyone on the forum bought this kit? I was looking at the rather uninspiring build review in 'Scale Aircraft Modelling' when a couple of things struck me. The box top painting (on the cover of SAM) shows underwing bomb racks - only one each side, mind you- does the kit provide these? The kit instructions apparently have the camo'd a/c in 'Earth Brown', which is surely wrong, isn't it/

There's an interesting book by Geoffrey Rex Collis, entitled 'Tattered Eagle'. Collis was a fitter with 27Sqn; he has some interesting snippets abut 27's Blenheim. Incl the fact that the ventral gun packs on the 'fighter' Blenheims were fitted to the a//c (in Singapore) as late as October 1941 (the pilot's back armour at the same time). There's probably a staff officer's OoB chart somewhere showing No27 as s 'night fighter' squadron, but I doubt very much they ever made a night interception - certainly they never had radae fitted. I suspect they (the fighters at least) were tasked with what would now be called 'intruder' missions.

There's been a LOT of confusion ih tne past about Blenheim SQ codes in Malaya in 1941. 62 sqdn IS 'FX'; 27 Sqdn is 'PT'. And it seems that 27Sq was half-Blenheim 'fighter' and half bomber (6a/c of each).

The 'Whitney Straight@ could be one of the Malayan Volunteer AF a/c evacuated first to Sumatra and then Java.. What's the a/c in the distance under the B-17 wing?

The Thai Navy did have a/c during the war; the Japanese supplied some (6?) E8Ns (or possibly E4Ns -the few photos are unclear) and later received 6 E13A 'Jakes' photos exist. The E13As are pictured in standard Thai roundel & fin stripes, but whether the pics are wartime or post-war is unknown.

Thai AF colours; a fraught subject! There are virtually no photographs to prove anything. Let's look at that nice Hawk III pic above. First camo: it does look very low contrast, one shade only, but look at the top of the tailplane - clearly two colours; possibly a low-contrast green/brown scheme? The square symbol on the fin looks like a stylised Thai number '2'. The triangle on the fuselage is a unit marking. Some explanation is required. In 1939-40 the Thai (Siamese) AF had 5 wings, each of which was identified by a specific colour & a character from the Ramanaya folk opera, as shown on the Hawk 75 & Hawk IIi side views These are all very similar, it would take an expert to tell them apart (I can't). No.1 wing's colour was red; No.2's was violet; No.3's yellow; No.4's blue and No.5's leaf green. The shape of the insignia denotes the squadron inside the wing - No.1 squadron was a violet circular outline, No.2 was a light blue diamond outline and No.3 was a triangle in grey (or possibly yellow). This Would be the colour scheme carried during the Franco-Thai War. Now for the Hawk 75N. First, a little history (sorry!). in January 1942 Tha9iland officially allied herself with Japan. It would SEEM that this was when the pre-war Thai roundels (which could too easily be mistaken for RAF roundels) were replaced by the 'flag' insignia and the fuselage white stripe added (to comply with JAAF practice. BTW photo evidence for the 'flag' insignia is VERY thin; that pic of a Hawk 75 with 'flags' (which comes from a mid-1942 Japanese aviation paper) is the only one I've seen with 'flags'. Lastly, there was a small Thai naval air arm; it SEEMS that their a/c retained the pre-war roundels and rudder stripes throughout the war.

This pc was taken in France, after the remnant of the Dutch Army AF had withdrawn southwards after Holland was over-run by the Germans. Possibly taken by the Germans after the fall of France?

When the Vildebeest was set up to carry bombs, with underwing bomb carriers/racks - as in the Malayan/Singapore campaign - was the under-fuselage torpedo rack removed, or did the 'beests fly with both?

If you go to - and click on the RHS arrow for a long way, you'll see lots of propaganda pics from Singapore in 2941 and eventually reach a b&w pic of a Blenheim If taxiing past a row of Buffalos (It's identically sited as the extremely well-known pic of a Blenheim bomber taxiing past the same row of Buffs.) The thing is that, unlike the colour pics of 27Sqn Blenheim Ifs, this pic is taken from the port side and shows that entire underside was light blue, not the half black/half light blue as one the Buffs. Other points are that although a/c has 27's 'PT' codes, it doesn't have the lt blue fuselsge band shown on the colour piddle, and - it may just be my rotten eyesight - but the belly gun pack doesn't seem to have any guns in it. There's also a couple of nice pics of No.1 Sqn RAAF Hudsons (US codes)

If you just go to Google Images and look for 'Amiot 143' and you'll find lots of good pics + interior shot & cutaways and 3- or 4-view plans. Otherwise there is a book on the Amiot 143 by LELA Presse (the Avions guys), but it will be expensive.

Trouble is, it's hopelessly inaccurate.; I built it a few years ago and it took a lot of work to make it acceptable (but not actually accurate). I'm not going to list it's faults - that would take a whole page - but I suggest getting an accurate set of 1/72nd drawings and compare the kit parts to them.

This month's (April 2017) 'Scale Aircraft Modelling' has a 4-page article by Paul Lucas entitled 'RAF Brewster Buffalos in the Far East 1941'. In it Mr. Lucas posits the theory that the Buffalos were painted in darker RAAF dark green & Brown shades rather than the standard RAF dark green/dark earth Temperate Land Scheme. In his 3rd para in the article, Mr Lucas states - ' ....photographs appear to show two relatively dark colours of comparatively low tonal contrast, which do not look like the usual Temperate Land Scheme colours of Dark Green & Dark Earth..' Hmmmm. I don't think I can agree with this. I have several photos of Buffs which show a contrast similar to that of aircraft in TLS. Mr Lucas also suggests that the colour photos of 27Sqn Blenheim Ifs (NOT 62 Sqn as is specified throughout the article) also show the lower-contrast RAAF green/brown colours. Again, I don't see this. As usual, Mr Lucas has done some ferocious research, discovering an entry in Seletar's.ORB on the possibility of acquiring dopes from Australian sources. there doesn't seem to any proof they did, and even IF they did, there's always the possibility that RAF colours were specified, not RAAF ones. there's also a comment that the Belgian Buffs had the same darker colours; photos taken of these aircraft in the US before delivery, do seem to show darker colours, but photos of these a/c in RAF/RN service in the UK and the ME appear to match the contrast of the TLS. Another thing about the Blenheim Ifs in Malaya; Mr Lucas seems to suggest (to me, at least) that these 'fighter' a/c had their undersides painted overall light blue. Now I was under the impression that these a/c had half blue-half black unders, a la the Buffalos The Time photos DO seem to show, at Least to me. Any thoughts? One last whine; SAM always gives colour references Only in Vallejo paints (do Vallejo pay large sums for this?) For the 95% of modellers who don't use Vallejo, the FS#s of the paints suggested in the artice are:- RAAF dark green #2 - FS34064; RAAF brown #3 - FS30097; RAAF #4 - FS35352 & RAAF sky blue FS35550. All-in-all,I can only sum up the article with that classis Scottish verdict - 'Not Proven'.

In The Hands Of Fate - the author's name is MESSIMER, not Massimer, as I typed earlier with my big clown fingers. Sorry!