[What's your latest acquisition? MkVIII]

Six pages from 111 Squadron's ORB, covering 25-30 January 1965, from the National Archives.

 

 

[A flash of clean light hope (1/72 J F Edwards Kittyhawk I)]

1 minute ago, Quiet Mike said:

From a from an increasingly militant middle aged cyclist who occasionally wears lycra, but mostly wears wool, and occasionally a MkIII*
 

 

Is that the MkIII* there on the bike? Mine is a postwar BSA from 1928. Always wanted a P14, but they're far too rare here and I've made do with an M1917 Enfield by Eddystone. 

[The true old times are dead (1/72 92 Squadron Lightning F.2)]

1 minute ago, jackroadkill said:

 

You're the midwest's very own Oscar Wilde, Edward.

I'm happy to report that, thanks to Grant's tender ministrations, the wallpaper has gone long before I have.

[The true old times are dead (1/72 92 Squadron Lightning F.2)]

21 minutes ago, Skip said:

And my apologies too for the thread drift but I'm afraid us WIWOLs (When I Was On Lightnings!) can't resist it!

 

This is like God popping in to the rectory while the vicar is having tea with the deacon and discussing, oh, I don't know, the Book of Job or something, and God saying "well, here's what I was really thinking...anyway, sorry for the bother, I hope I didn't spoil the conversation too much." I would have pushed my granny over a cliff to get to ask an RAF pilot questions as a boy. I still would now, but she's dead, so it means less.

[A flash of clean light hope (1/72 J F Edwards Kittyhawk I)]

I have very mixed feelings about cyclists, having, as a small boy cycling home from the Lake Forest Public Library with Jane's Fighting Ships 1985-1986 in my backpack (which is excruciatingly heavy when you're eleven), been run over by one of those fellas in a spandex bodysuit on his bike, who would have left me there with (as it turned out) my lower teeth sticking through my face just below my lips, had a passing good samaritan not wrangled him and frog-marched him with me to my parents' front door. I realize it's not fair to judge all of you based on this, but as a runner for many years before my children were born, I always regarded bikes the same way bikes regard cars.

 

However, I like both of you, and these foul drivers were strangers, so to the devil with them, the murdering swine.

 

On 11/20/2022 at 9:58 AM, Hook said:

We modelers are tough as nails, people, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. 

 

A craggy mien and square jaw are the marks of a modeller.

[1:72 Airfix/MPM Gloster Meteor F.8]

Just now, giemme said:

Or, you can mask and paint them checks. Just saying...  

-- 

[The true old times are dead (1/72 92 Squadron Lightning F.2)]

5 minutes ago, Skip said:

The view down the (radar) 'boot' as it was known was indeed a bit weird, it was a 'B' scope presentation but the human being is an extraordinarily adaptable animal and you got used to it. 

 

I confess I had to look up what a B-scope presentation was, having never had to read a radar display in my life. Did one have to jam one's face right up to the display to read it, or could it be interpreted from being looked at while scanning the rest of the cockpit? Also, very exciting to have now not one, but two fast jet pilots in here, finally I'm doing something ten year old me would be interested in.

[The true old times are dead (1/72 92 Squadron Lightning F.2)]

6 hours ago, perdu said:

It is possible I may have a spare, free Hasegawa one, allow me to check today.

 

Er does it weird you?

 

I'm a middle-aged American man living in a midwestern city who flys a Union Jack, spells "colour" with a u, and reads up on 1970s British political history so I can make oblique jokes on a modelling forum: I'm not a reliable barometer of weird! But I certainly wouldn't say no, and would be happy to reimburse for postage at the very least. 

 

6 hours ago, Rob G said:

If accuracy isn't an issue, the otherwise ghastly offerings in 1/72th from Trumpeter should be available relatively cheaply and from my memory of investigating the 2 that I had (donated them to my  model club as raffle prizes, IIRC, because anyone who gambles deserves bad luck occasionally), they don't seem to be too difficult to build. (Borne out by the reviews I just looked up). 

 

I vaguely recalled those having a fair number of more complex bits, being aimed at the adult modeller who had been blinded by CA fumes and/or never seen a Lightning. I'm sure Win wouldn't notice the inaccuracies, but I worry he'd struggle with the smaller bits.

 

4 hours ago, Dave Swindell said:

In frontline squadron service the upper cannon ports can be seen both open and blanked; the photos with them open tend to be early in service, and those with them blanked off later (the Lightning gun sight was found to be fairly rudimentary and not very accurate in service). The lower ports are nearly always blanked off when missiles are fitted - the photo of the 111 sqn Lightning you posted appears to be an exception. I couldn't find any photo's of a 4-cannon fit in service, this isn't to say it wasn't a fit, more that it wasn't common / photographed.

 

 

Thank you so much, Dave! So presumably XM190 just had her lower ports left unblanked, even though with the missiles on there'd be no cannon. Do anyone know of some memoirs by 111 Squadron pilots who flew with it in the 1960s? Sometimes they shed light on stuff in photos in passing.

 

3 hours ago, Fritag said:

Watching a Lightning or two drop out of a cloud base out over the North Sea not far from Binbrook and get stuck into a turning fight with a formation of Jags before disappearing to the heavens was a sight to see.  The romanticism of memory makes it a vertical descent and vertical climb in full burner against a sullen sky every time.  

 

1 hour ago, Fritag said:

Anyways.  Drift over.  Sorry PC.

 

 

Ah yes, drop into a build thread, share fascinating stories about extremely cool experiences with the type of aircraft being built, which people pay real money to read (cf. the Grub Street books), and then apologize. As if we could forgive that relevant and interesting addition to the thread, you monster. Unforgivable.  (I should build a 6 Squadron Jaguar next, to lure you out like a bowl of milk for a hedgehog.)

 

29 minutes ago, Navy Bird said:

 

Ah, the Trumpeter Lightnings. If accuracy is an issue, you've got quite a bit of work ahead. Here's my RFI, which has a link to the WIP. I would never do this again now that the new Airfix kit is available.

 

Your build cost me a fortune in aftermarket, Bill! Many years ago, my original plan was to use the Trumpeter F.1 to do this aircraft.

 

29 minutes ago, Navy Bird said:

 

Nice work so far, Edward. It looks like Winnie has inherited your scale modelling gene, as my grandson Carter has inherited mine. There may be hope for the hobby after all. Provided, of course, that the boys don't discover those resin figures of mostly nekked ladies. That might divert their attention.   

 

The other day, Winston sad, apropos of nothing "Did you know princesses would let people watch them undress, as a reward? Isn't that weird?" (Clearly he's learning a lot at school.) 

 

"Well, what about it, Edward," said Mrs P, "would you pay to watch me undress?" 

"I have, Melanie. A very heavy price indeed."

[The true old times are dead (1/72 92 Squadron Lightning F.2)]

Trying to rush through this as I was supposed to be asleep an hour ago, but a major miscommunication ("Let me get my kindle, I'll watch the baby so you can shower percolated through Mrs. P's Mars-to-Venus babelfish as "I have done all I shall do today, and it's only 7:30 PM, by all means vanish for two hours, for I shall be abed." I eventually text her to surmise that she must be cleaner than any human being yet living after about two hours, at which point it became clear that (a) she hadn't gotten in yet, and (b) it's back to signal flags, because voice transmission of information has failed me.

 

17 hours ago, Bedders said:

I'm in for a bit of this. (Got an Airfix F6 in the stash, awaiting return of mojo.) In the meantime and for inspiration, this is quite a nice video of Lightnings at Binbrook in 1987: https://youtu.be/w7gTqFU2Qlk

 

Speaking of the Last Lightning Show, my copy of The Last of the Lightnings vanished from where I'd left it (in a chair, I'm always leaving books in chairs in case I find myself sitting in one with nothing to do -- proof that deep down, I must be an optimist), and reappeared today with major damage to the dust jacket, in the weirdly dry and lizardlike hands of my Winnie. 

 

 

He's been amusing himself by finishing a 1/700 Dragon HMS Invincible I bought with the hull built for the princely sum of $2, and did a very creditable job of adding the masts as well as the propellers, shafts, and radar aerials today. Not too bad for someone who once fidgeted so hard he stepped backwards and fell down a staircase.

 

 

He also clipped out the air wing and we've all been stepping on Sea Harriers all day. He is only seven, after all.

 

I'm not sure why, maybe it's because his hairstyle is rapidly approaching peak 1970s, but the little fellow is quite taken with the Lightning. As he looked through the book, he muttered to himself, "I've got to build two, because there are two different [F.6 and T.5 -- he cannot as yet discern the differences between single-seat Lightnings] kinds and I need one of each."*

 

"Does it weird you out that he has your brain with my features?" Mrs P asked me.

 

Grant, meanwhile, found a dress my mother had bought for Madeleine and wore it all day along with its accompanying bow, leaving us to wonder if we were on the cusp of shipping off to fight in an exciting new front of the interminable Culture War. No matter what, of course, my love for him will be exactly the same: only slightly less than Winston. He managed to score a 1/350 Mikro-Mir R-class SSBN out of my stash when it became clear that Winston was as interested in sharing Invincible as the junta was in sharing the Falklands. 

 

Since I didn't have much time, I worked mainly on the Reskit exhaust. This is the most beautifully cast resin I've ever seen. I'm not sure if it's 3D-printed or what -- it certainly doesn't look like what my little 4K printer puts out and has casting blocks -- but it's amazing.

 

I very carefully extricated the flame holders and dropped them into part of the little engine shaft(? piping? I'm tired).

 

 

I also, as you can see, assembled and primed the Barracuda seat. 

 

 

To get the seat to fit the Sword cockpit, I had to sand down what I think is part of the manual override handle assembly on the right side of the seat base, and it seems like it will go in much better now.

 

 

 

 

* I welcome advice on the best Lightning kits for a small boy. I have built Sword and the Airfix F.2A/F.6, and know that they aren't it. In this case, accuracy takes a back seat to simplicity and ease of building.

[What are you reading - Part II]

1 hour ago, Whofan said:

I cannot believe that since Nov 12th no one is reading a book, magazine, newspaper, kit instructions, or the list of ingredients on a dairy milk bar !!

 

I’ve just started reading State of Emergency: The Way We Were: Britain, 1970–1974 by Dominic Sandbrook.

This book is the third in his series of histories of modern Britain, spanning the years 1956 to 1982.

He melds political history with social history in a very good way, and at no time does he polemicise about the events and people he writes about.

 

My interest in these books comes from the fact they cover the period of time from when I was 6 to 32. Such a lot happened I had no idea about!

 

 

I very much enjoyed the Sandbrook books; as someone who was born in 1983, they have helped me to blend in here seamlessly. No one suspects.

[How accurate is the Kits-World 74 Squadron F-4J sheet?]

It's too late for me, as I already bought it, but I was wondering if anyone had spotted any glaring clangers on it, or if it was safe to use; I've a vague recollection that Kits-World decal research is not always the best.

[Revell 1/32 Spitfire IXc Royal Egyptian Air Force, 1948]

Excellent work, Stew! The kit looks like it arrived all as one piece, not a seam in sight.

[The true old times are dead (1/72 92 Squadron Lightning F.2)]

23 hours ago, Stew Dapple said:

I'm ambivalent about the Lightning, having had the wits scared out of me (never to return) by one roaring perpendicular to the line of the crowd from behind at low-level when we were all looking at another aircraft in front of us at one of the Duxford air shows back in the day, when such things were probably considered character-building and a jolly jape. It was, though, an undeniably impressive display of raw power, you could feel it.

 

21 hours ago, Hamden said:

 

I'll take a seat for this as well, another to remember being caught out by the arrival of a Lightning  from behind the crowd line (Not allowed anymore) with full reheat with it then pulling vertical. The noise and vibration through the ground still remembered to this day - NO ear defenders back then either!

 

19 hours ago, Fritag said:

And another.  Southend-on-Sea airshow when I was a single digit or early double digit lad.  Cue shock, awe, tears and a burning desire to be that man.

 

Sensing a theme here...

 

I'm extremely envious of all of you who got to see a Lightning in flight. There's a T.5, XS422, being restored in Mississippi, of all places, about fifty or sixty miles from New Orleans in Louisiana, and apparently, if one can get there for one of the two times a year they do a ground run, you can hear and see it for free, but it's not the same. I do hope to get out there, but the distance involved makes it a bit tricky for me. Perhaps they'll actually manage to get her airborne in my lifetime.

 

I'll confess that as a boy, I was a firm partisan of the Tornado F.2 (and truly, knowledge only brings pain, for now I know that in the F.2 incarnation, it was approximately as useful an air defense fighter as the Goodyear Blimp), and didn't much rate the Lightning, which to my child's eyes looked suspiciously like a MiG-21. The Lightning has grown on me since. I was actually rather surprised that it was by all accounts fairly pleasant to fly, which doesn't seen to have been the case very often with early supersonic jets. Lightnings may have periodically burst into flames in flight, but at least they didn't sabre dance like the F-100, or just...explode every now and then, like the MiG-19. 

 

19 hours ago, CedB said:

Ah, Lightnings. I'm of that age where it was the dream of every boy to fly one. Of course I'm too tall. As David Gunson says in his classic 'What goes up might come down' if I'd had to eject from one the dashboard would have chopped me off at the knees. Not so an old colleague, 'Bang Out' Benger, who ejected from his over the North Sea after both engines caught fire. Months in hospital and now two inches shorter. Those were the days…

 

Good news for Past Ced! This was definitely the belief in the RAF when the F.1 entered service, and the first pilots were restricted to a height of five foot six inches or less (and apparently referred to as "the league of little men"), but a series of not-terribly-scientific-sounding demonstrations for new pilots at the OCU, wherein a tall trainee was placed in a disarmed seat in an aircraft and then rapidly winched out, seems to have left everyone who tried it with their kneecaps and all parts south, at least according to Peter Caygill's Lightning: The Operational History. 

 

16 hours ago, gingerbob said:

I tried to go look at ORBs for you, but the appropriate one is not available for online viewing. 

 

 

Indeed not. I had to pay the National Archives the princely sum of £8 to have a poke 'round for me, the results of which they'll hopefully appraise me of by the 22nd.

 

19 hours ago, Dave Swindell said:

The upper cannon barrel fairings can just be made out in the photo, and missiles fitted = no lower cannon. There was an interchangeable belly pack that provided space for either the cannons and ammunition, or the missile control units. With the missiles fitted the lower cannon barrel fairings remained, but cannons themselves weren't fitted.

 

And once again, Cunningham's Law proves itself. I'm obliged to you very much, Dave, I know very little about Lightnings, even in comparison to the other things (everything) I know very little about. The SAM book on Lightnings has not proved very helpful, and the DACO one I purchased is somewhere between Point A and Point Me, snarled up in the pre-Christmas postal logjams. With the guns absent, would the barrel fairings have the gunports covered, or would they be opened? It seemed like most photos of F.1As I saw had no gunports on the lower fairings. Though mayyyyybe XM190's sister F.1A XM189 has the lower fairing gunports as well? The upper ones seem to be closed up entirely.

 

 

Any help is greatly appreciated. Better to know now than in the RFI (if we even make it to one, knock wood).

 

15 hours ago, Brandy said:

Dear God, Edward, you really need to do this writing thing professionally. For yourself not someone else!

 

 

 

That was my childhood goal after I realized I wasn't brave and had weak eyesight. To paraphrase Emperor Hirohito, my life situation has not developed necessarily to my advantage. 

 

19 hours ago, jackroadkill said:

That's a superb intro, and as such I'll gloss over all the things about Churchill that I don't like

 

Wise.

 

21 hours ago, Ray S said:

I am sure you will do a fantastic job on this, I have loved the three Sword 1/72 Lightnings I have built, but always kept to what was in the box, except markings.

 

I built two, and was plagued by bad luck with both -- on one the NMF was stripped while masking, and on the the other I wrecked the ailerons and had to loot a Sword T.4 kit for replacements. Surely I've gotten better since then though. Or, perhaps, maybe I haven't at least gotten any stupider?

 

Anyway, speaking of not keeping to what was in the box, the metal nose ring and shock cone arrived. They looked very nice.

 

Naturally, given that I was working with a currently extremely rare and effectively irreplaceable kit, using a piece of aftermarket for an entirely different kit, late at night after a long day of attending a hellish birthday party for a schoolfriend one of your children*, and my own skill level is indifferent, I immediately proceeded to cut off the kit intake ring to replace it with the metal one.

 

 

 

Here we met our first hurdle: the Sword plastic is extremely thick, several hundred times thicker than that of the Airfix kit, so thick that if it were a scale-accurate representation of the Lightning's skin, the aircraft would be both impervious to conventional weaponry and incapable of flight. A sh...edload of sanding and scraping followed.

 

 

Gentle reader, I was not even close to having the nose sanded down enough to admit the intake ring when this photo was taken, though I did manage to stab my own finger with a scalpel blade soon after. It's the little things.

 

By the time I had the port side more or less hewn into shape, my hand seemed permanently contorted into a sort of claw, and proved reluctant to rearrange itself to a more pleasing shape. Consequently, I got out the Dremel for the starboard side, since the only thing more I could do at this point was compound my initial error by melting the kit in a flurry of high-speed sanding.

 

I'm happy to report I did not melt the nose, and did only minor cosmetic damage to an area that was never going to escape filler under my tender ministrations.

 

 

I can't escape the nasty suspicion that the intake ring may demand shimming of the fuselage or some other field expedient solution that will in turn throw everything else off, which just goes to show: never take risks, and never try anything new.

 

 

 

 

As you may have gathered, the whole process so far has caused me a certain amount of anxiety, and I can't help but feel I've merely kicked the can down the road to when I close up the fuselage. 

 

I also cut one of the Barracude Mk4 seats off the casting block and began sanding it down and all that. I have the nasty suspicion at present that the resin seat was just designed based off of an actual seat, without reference to any kit cockpit. Certainly it doesn't quiiiite fit on the centreline of the Sword cockpit:

 

 

 

 

Since the little panels will all be provided by photoetch, the odds of this not fitting properly strike me as high. And that's before we come to the question of how the seat ought to be angled, as I have no clue.

 

 

I regret cutting off the kit intake ring, thick and misshapen though it was, and likely will never attempt it again with a Sword Lightning. 

 

In other news, the Chuggernaut has returned home from Michigan, along with Mrs P. 

 

 

She is struggling to poop, but as I tell all my children, daddy never poops, so he cannot relate to their struggles in that line.

 

 

Anyway, I was going to go to the grotto, do fifteen minutes of work on the kit and go to bed at ten, but now it's 1:30 AM, so my excellent time management skills have struck again.

 

 

 

* Some vile little brat sat there absolutely annihilating poor Winston with cruel mockery, even getting the other kids to chant at him -- and poor Win is actually in these situations too articulate; his classmates cannot understand him when he's agitated because he talks to them as he would talk to me -- while this kid's mother just stood on (especially galling to me, as I'm one of those parents who's mortified when their children misbehave in public, and Winston keeps me mortified almost non-stop), and me with the knowledge I couldn't just swear at the kid until he was a sobbing wreck because Mrs P is a teacher at their school just sitting there, strewing, and trying to stop the kid's heart with my mind. It's against the law to hit other people's children, because otherwise people would never be able to bring themselves to stop.

[A pair of Airfix Hawks in 1/72. Finished.]

8 hours ago, mark.au said:

“Do only what is necessary and required. Efficiency is elegant. Less is more.” 
― Scott Perry

 

While true for yardwork, I would counter with a quote from one of your better class of Edwards, Edward Luttwak:

 

"[E]verything that we value in human life is within the realm of inefficiency—love, family, attachment, community, culture, old habits, comfortable old shoes."

[A flash of clean light hope (1/72 J F Edwards Kittyhawk I)]

22 hours ago, Hook said:

Oh, and since law enforcement has been mentioned and just to add to the screeching offtopicveering and in the general spirit of openness, I got run over by a car yesterday when biking to work.

 

Hell of a thing to just mention casually. Glad you're alive! I can only imagine what it would be like to discover I had muscles at this juncture of my life, so well done on that front as well.

4 hours ago, philp said:

Lovely job.

 

If you ever make it up this way to Salt Lake City, let me know.  I will run you up to the Hill Aerospace Museum.

 

 

 

Offer in haste, repent in leisure...

[Hunting down an obscure little book from my youth.]

Wait, there's another Procopius?

[Differences between the Mk4 seat in Hunters vs Lightnings?]

A bit dirty pool of Barracuda not to mention that, I think! Ah well, price of ignorance.

[A flash of clean light hope (1/72 J F Edwards Kittyhawk I)]

On 11/17/2022 at 9:31 PM, Stew Dapple said:

 

... and didn't even offer her a lift? That's just rude!

 

I thought so as well, actually! 

 

 

 

Thank you all for your kind words, encouragement throughout the build, and most importantly, just participating in the thread. This is a solitary hobby, yet the paradox of it is that it's the friendships which make it so great.

 

'The next build thread is up. 

 

 

I regret to inform you it is extremely long and self-indulgent as introductions go, even by my standards. You may safely skip to section IV and know you missed nothing.

[The true old times are dead (1/72 92 Squadron Lightning F.2)]

I. The End

 

"This was the last time that such a thing could happen. This was the last time that London would be the capital of the world. This was an act of mourning for the imperial past. This marked the final act in Britain's greatness. This was a great gesture of self-pity and after this the coldness of reality and the status of Scandinavia... It was a celebration of a great thing that we did in the past."
-- Patrick O'Donovan, The Observer, 31 January 1965

 

"My life is over, but it has not yet ended."
-- WSC to Diana Churchill, c.1960

 

“He is not a man for whom I ever had esteem. Always in the wrong, always surrounded by crooks, a most unsuccessful father.”

-- Evelyn Waugh to Ann Fleming, c. late January 1965

 

He had, virtually everyone agreed -- even if they believed it for wildly differing reasons and could agree on nothing else -- lived too long.

 

Little more than a month prior, the Beatles released their fourth studio album, setting "Eight Days a Week" loose upon an unsuspecting world, and William Hartnell had rolled up the Dalek invasion of Earth in six episodes. It was inconvenient that he should die then, to provide an uncomfortable reminder of a world that had ceased existing almost imperceptibly, by degrees, until the change was so far advanced that to be confronted with the reminder of what had once been, for good or ill, was jarring. And yet he had known it was coming, or rather, for they are not the same thing, he had been seized by that powerful certainty which so often lead him astray in his long, eventful life, until at last it made him immortal, whatever happened to the wasted prison of flesh that failed him at last on 24 January of 1965. 

 

As the barge that bore his body made its way up the Thames, they came. He had been asked, long after the war, after he had been prime minister twice, exceeding the promise of his cruel and revered father exponentially, after the little boy whom nobody loved and who had made himself difficult to love stood on that balcony in 1945 and told the cheering crowds "This is your victory", and they had roared back, voices thick and heavy with love, "No, it is yours", after all of that, what year of his life he would relive again had he the chance. "1940, every time. Every time." Time had stopped, or rather ceased to exist for him then. Everything before fell away; everything after faded into insignificance, washed out by the bright flare of that single perfect year when everything fell apart, and he picked up that shattered sword and that broken shield and made the choice that meant that all of this was happening now, twenty-four years and some months later.

 

They came. All the fighting services had been there on the ground, the RAF escort, the Grenadier Guards, the Navy (always so ambivalent about him -- Somerville, who loathed him, had written to his wife that "we are just as much a dictator country as either Germany or Italy and one day the British public will wake up and ask what we are fighting for") and the Royal Marines all had played their part. But at last, as the Havengore set off, the heirs of his paladins arrived. 

 

Sixteen Lightnings in four diamonds of four dropped, one after the other, from the murk of the dead January sky and roared low over the Thames. In 1940, that magical year already receding into myth, before the glorious boys who had not burned to death in falling aeroplanes, or drowned in the Channel, or been dashed to pieces against the fields and towns of a world on fire, eating itself alive insatiably, entered inconvenient middle age, still alive, still with opinions, able to embarrass and annoy the children who now inherited the world they had saved, before all of that, the American correspondent Vincent Sheean had stood on the white cliffs of Dover and gazed into the summer sky of a world that seemed destined for a darkness more profound and more profane than could be conceived by the human mind. He had written then: "The flash of the Spitfire’s wing, then, through the mist glare of the summer sky, was the first flash of a sharpened sword; they would fight, they would hold out." For the last time, the wings of the RAF would gleam under the shrouded sun for him, elegaic and mournful despite the overwhelming roar from their engines, a sound still not loud enough to rouse the dead. 

 

II. πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ, ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα

 

And well for thee, saying in my dark hour,
When all the purport of my throne hath failed,
That quick or dead thou holdest me for King.
King am I, whatsoever be their cry;
And one last act of kinghood shalt thou see
Yet, ere I pass. 

-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King, "The Passing of Arthur"

 

"I thought Winston talked about the most frightful rot...I despair when he works himself up to a passion of emotion when he ought to make his brain think and reason."

-- Edward Wood, Lord Halifax, diary entry for 27 May 1940

 

"THE PRIME MINISTER said that the nations which went down fighting rose again, but those which surrendered tamely were finished."

-- CAB 65/13, WM (40) 145: Confidential Annex to War Cabinet Minutes, 16:00 meeting on 28 May 1940

 

But you don't hoot at Stalin — that's “not done” —
Only at Churchill; I've no wish to praise him,
I'd gladly shoot him when the war is won,
Or now, if there was someone to replace him.
But unlike some, I'll pay him what I owe him;
There was a time when empires crashed like houses,
And many a pink who'd titter at your poem
Was glad enough to cling to Churchill's trousers.
Christ! How they huddled up to one another
Like day-old chicks about their foster-mother!

 

I'm not a fan for “fighting on the beaches,”
And still less for the “breezy uplands” stuff,
I seldom listen-in to Churchill's speeches,
But I'd far sooner hear that kind of guff
Than your remark, a year or so ago,
That if the Nazis came you'd knuckle under
And peaceably “accept the status quo.”
Maybe you would! But I've a right to wonder
Which will sound better in the days to come,
“Blood, toil and sweat” or “Kiss the Nazi's bum.”
-- Eric Blair (writing as George Orwell), "From One Non-Combatant to Another (A Letter to ‘Obadiah Hornbooke’ [Alex Comfort])", Tribune, 18 June 1943
 

Here he is now, alive, at his moment, the moment when, as if by magic, a switch was flipped, and he transformed from an erratic failure into the hero he had always dreamed of being, when every melodramatic, emotive instinct that had driven him relentlessly to disaster after disaster drove him to an act of self-abnegation sublime enough to give his country at least eighty more years of life. 

 

It isn't September yet, and he has not yet sat with Park and seen too few squadrons being marshalled to hold back the might of something terrible and so far inexorable. It is May, and he has been Prime Minister for only a few weeks, a moment he has perhaps waited for all his adult life and longer too. It is gift and curse, for it is, at this moment, no longer a position where raw ambition is enough to see one through. Political survival is suddenly secondary to the survival of a small island and part of another, separated from a continent now ruined, possibly for ever, by a thin strip of sea, barely more than twenty miles, practically close enough to touch. 

 

And now, he is sitting at a table with men who have outmaneuvered him at the oleaginous game of politics for a decade or more, men who know him to be an imbecile, wrong about everything, and Lord Halifax, his opposite in every way, is patiently explaining to him that to continue the war past the defeat of France, indeed, for any length of time at all, will result inexorably in the destruction of the one thing everyone knows the arch-imperialist loves, that massive empire, and the ineluctable bankruptcy of a country that cannot afford a long war. And perhaps, if he was the caricature so many for and against him believe him to be, it might have given him pause. Even before he was eclipsed as the worst chancellor of the exchequer in history by subsequent developments, he was still capable of basic math. But it is also safe to say that he never truly cared about money; he was never truly financially secure until after the war. In 1937, when he began The History of the English Speaking Peoples, its publication delayed by his obdurately remaining in politics until 1955, long past the patience of his party and all but his closest friends, he wrote: "And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round. Let us then declare that King Arthur and his noble knights, guarding the Sacred Flame of Christianity and the theme of a world order, sustained by valour, physical strength, and good horses and armour, slaughtered innumerable hosts of foul barbarians and set decent folk an example for all time." Was he thinking of those words during that awful May of 1940? We know Arthur, or at least Tennyson's Arthur, is much on his mind, for he will reference a stanza on 4 June, when committing a nation to fight on the beaches and beyond: 
 

"The great French Army was very largely, for the time being, cast back and disturbed by the onrush of a few thousands of armored vehicles. May it not also be that the cause of civilization itself will be defended by the skill and devotion of a few thousand airmen?

 

"There never has been, I suppose, in all the world, in all the history of war, such an opportunity for youth. The Knights of the Round Table, the Crusaders, all fall back into the past-not only distant but prosaic; these young men, going forth every morn to guard their native land and all that we stand for, holding in their hands these instruments of colossal and shattering power, of whom it may be said that:

 

"'Every morn brought forth a noble chance
"'And every chance brought forth a noble knight,'

"deserve our gratitude, as do all the brave men who, in so many ways and on so many occasions, are ready, and continue ready to give life and all for their native land."

 

In context, the stanza is a mournful one: "For now I see the true old times are dead,/When every morning brought a noble chance..." And there is something apocalyptic in the choice to fight on, as there was when Britain ended the Great War. All present remember the world that 1914 swept away. 

 

Archilochus, a poet beloved by the ancient Greeks, but of whose work only fragmentary quotations remain, is said to have remarked "πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ, ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα." This is generally translated to mean "a fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing", though I have always rendered it to my children as "the fox knows many tricks, but the hedgehog one mighty truth." For the hedgehog, the one big thing, the mighty truth, if you will indulge me, is that so long as it remains true to its essential nature, so long as it remains curled up, the fox cannot destroy it. Winston's idee fixe is Britain's greatness, and he has decided that it would be greater to lose the Empire and see every reactionary cause he has fought his whole life for (and there have been many, with more to come) destroyed than to give in now, at this moment, to that man, who somehow has brought something to life that must be burnt out of the world.  

 

III. The Beginning

 

 

And here he is, aged seven in 1881, the same age as my Winnie now, and looking so much like him to my eye that it hurts, still just a little boy, living without a purpose in a world that will not know Hitler for eight more years. He is for now, unencumbered by destiny, or greatness, or the unmet expectations of his father, not yet ideological shorthand or a distorted mirror for those who despise or love who they imagine him to be, just a naughty little boy. He has yet to stumble and crash his way through history. Though probably not his parents, there was someone who loved him and tucked him in at night, who held him when he cried -- even the Victorians were not so wholly insensate to human feeling as we like to believe -- and hoped he would never grow up while wishing he would do so faster. In fifty-nine years, this little boy, grown old but still, somewhere, deep inside, the same person, will be called upon to pull forth from his deepest self something like the will of a nation. 

 

IV. (and finally) The Build

 

I hope you will forgive the lengthy -- even by the standards of my vapid pseudointellectual pontifications -- introduction before we actually talk about the model. If not, I understand.  During the RAF flypast on 30 January 1965, Lightnings from four squadrons, Battle of Britain veterans all, participated: 19, 56, 92, and 111. This would have represented a substantial portion of the Lightning force in 1965, and given the type's serviceability early on in its career, probably also a large percentage of the aircraft capable of generating sorties on any given day. (Duncan Sandys, Churchill's one-time son-in-law, the only minster of defence to have been punched by the Chief of the Imperial General Staff in the course of his duties, may have inadvertently done the Lightning a favour after trying to throttle it and all other manned aircraft in their cradles, by phasing out National Service, for after the end of conscription, serviceability slowly improved, though it didn't peak until almost the end of the aircraft's career.) In any case, my research outside of archival sources suggests that one of the aircraft participating was XM190/G of Treble One. By coincidence, this aircraft was lost due to that frequent killer of Lightnings, an engine fire on March 15 -- my birthday -- in 1966* after transfer to 226 OCU (111 re-equipped with new F.3s in early 1965), with American exchange pilot Captain A C Petersen, who ejected successfully, at the controls. Happily a photo of the aircraft with 111 exists.

 

XM190 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

As you can see, most interestingly for an F.1A, she has her cannon mounted in the lower nose, rather than the upper as is typical for this mark. I am attempting to obtain a digital copy of the relevant portion of 111's ORB from the National Archives to confirm the aircraft was used in the flypast, but I have a large and expensive collection of Lightning decal sheets and whatever I uncover, I should be able to represent a Treble One Lightning overflying Churchill's funeral. I will be using the Sword kit, the best of a series of rather weak options for an early Lightning (if I could afford it, I would almost switch to 1/48 for Airfix's excellent 1960s jets in that scale, but how could I afford it or offer enough space to display any that I actually built, instead of hording?), as I don't relish the thought of doing all the wing cutting on the Airfix F.2A/F.6 to use the Alley Cat conversion set. 

 

As we all know that more aftermarket=more gooder, I am delighted to inform you that this kit is using a boatload. I have a set of the Quickboost intakes for the Airfix Lightning, just in case; a resin seat from Barracuda; resin exhausts from Reskit (I know the kit comes with one, but I built at least two Sword F.1A/F.3 kits back in the day, and both had hideously warped resin exhausts that were a trial. I would like a different trial this time. Assuming it even fits, it was allegedly made for the Airfix kit); and en route to me, a turned metal shock cone and intake ring; and also another one of Master's ludicrously small pitot tubes, none of the ones on the surviving Lightnings I built back in the day having survived the tender and enthusiastic ministrations of my own Winston. Barracuda have also been promising to release some new Lightning aftermarket this week for the past two weeks, so if time and funds permit, some of that may find its way into the build as well. 

 

Anyway, we're off. I enjoin you tenderly to please check out the Wants link in my signature -- if you like my builds, you can support more of the same awful crap by selling me things I want, and if you hate them, you can squeeze precious money out of me like the juice from a pomegranate. 

 

 

 

 

* Obviously a few years before I was born.

 

 

[1/72nd scale English Electric P1A, Whirlykits resin, Finished]

12 minutes ago, Mr T said:

Did the varnishing just before going to Telford and is now in the Gallery

 

I'm not seeing it yet, Martin, is this just a case of me missing the photos in that thread as readily as I miss finding whatever Mrs P needs me to locate?

[A Group of Gals - Two Revell B-17Gs and a Hasey Friend]

On 11/17/2022 at 10:31 AM, CedB said:

Hello? Anyone there?

 

 

Buffers!

 

You cannot imagine, would not believe, and definitely would be discomfited by how much you've been in my thoughts, having recently taken Winston to his first model show here, and because of the lead up to and wind down from SMW, and showing the boys all my photos I took in 2019. So glad to read you're well, and that there's a little more Ced in the world, even if at one or two removes. To think if I was a better planner, and wasn't such a wastrel, and was handsome and charming, and met you long before 2015, you could have had the dubious honour of being my father in law! What a wasted opportunity on my part, though a lucky escape for all other parties. 

 

Big kits are always a trial for me; I feel like the difficulty increases by a factor of the number of engines squared, and since you've built a B-36, I think that legitimately means you may be an actual demigod. Hopefully the joy of building these again begins to outweigh the frustration, so we can enjoy more dauntless Buffery!

[A flash of clean light hope (1/72 J F Edwards Kittyhawk I)]

Mrs P's grandmother has rather inconsiderately, if you ask me, taken a sharp handbrake turn for the worse, and so Mrs P and Madeleine have been dispatched to Michigan. Unfortunately, the cheapest way to get there is by Amtrak, our rather indifferently-run national rail line, which is probably most famous for renting the tracks from other railways and suffering from unbelievable delays as a result. (I was once delayed eight hours on a train from St Louis to Chicago; it would have been faster to rent a car, drive to Chicago, then drive it back to return it in Saint Louis, and then walk home.) And the cheapest time to depart was a quarter to six in the morning. This meant that Mrs P and Megagrub, our massive, grunting baby, had to wake up to catch a train at 0426. Mrs P, who is not known for getting ready to do anything quickly (I think she's still getting ready for the date we were going to go on shortly before Winston was born, in fact) made what I carefully described as the brave choice to wake up at 4 AM to catch a train fifteen minutes from our home. Mrs P, as inscrutable as she is beautiful, also opted to take Winston's school backpack, "because it will be lighter", so possibly Amtrak's fallen even further than I realized and the weight of the passengers is carefully scrutinized. 

 

In any case, picture the scene, if you will: an exhausted-looking middle-aged woman, clutching a baby and wearing a backpack that very, very clearly belongs to a small boy who likes the army, sprinting wildly down the street in the pitch blackness of the early morning, making a wild dash for public transport. What would you, almost automatically, assume when you saw that? Well, Johnny Law assumed it too, and she was trailed verrrrry slooooowly by a Friendly Policeman in his cruiser the entirety of the way to the station, presumably waiting for Mr Rochester to show up and drag her back to the attic. 

 

In any case, I received some texts about it.

 

 

The lack of a large, extremely heavy Scream Factory around the house means I have a lot more time in the evenings, and the boys labour under my iron hand. Their mother scourged them with whips, but I will scourge them with scorpions etc.

 

 

 

 

In any case, the pitot arrived today, as did some more Colourcoats. You know, I think I may like it a bit.

 

 

 The pitot, by Master, is teensy-weensy.

 

The things I do for accuracy:

 

 

 

 

 

Somewhat disappointing RFI here:

My lightbox needs replacing, and I'm down to one not very good light for it. 

 

[Heart pounding full of hope: a "Stocky" Edwards Kittyhawk I in 1/72]

Forgive the photos, I decided on an RFI during a burst of unjustified self-confidence. The camera sees what the eye occludes, and I'm much less happy with it than I was before I studied the photos. Additionally, my Pixel 7's camera has been incredibly disappointing, possibly due to a poor choice of case. And my lightbox needs replacing, and I need new lights for it besides. But those are all excuses. 

 

In any case, I opted to build a Kittyhawk shortly after the death of J F Edwards, Canada's greatest and last remaining ace from the Second World War. DK Decals has a sheet with a Kittyhawk I purportedly flown by Edwards in June of 1942 during his time on 260 Squadron, though not the aircraft he flew when on 17 June 1942 he shot down and killed the experte Otto Schulz with a deflection shot of remarkable difficulty.  The Special Hobby Kittyhawk Ia kit was my base, with the only cosmetic modification to make it a Kittyhawk I being to replace the later bulged 0.50 barrels with some brass rod of the appropriate size. Paints are the excellent Colourcoats for all but the cockpit interior (a Gunze mixture), the rubber of the tires (Tamiya), and the propeller blades and tips (Gunze again). Some Eduard etch was used, principally to irritate me, I think, which probably speaks volumes about how low diplomatic relations with my own psyche have sunk. 

 

Wildly discursive build thread here: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[What's your latest acquisition? MkVIII]

Pixel Buds for Mrs P for Christmas, per her wishes.

 

A Hasegawa F-4J(UK) for me, per heaven's divine mandate.

[Baby, let me follow you down - Special Hobby 1/72 Harvard Mk.II/IIA/IIB - Finished]

2 hours ago, Ngantek said:

Nice work Alistair. Good on you for having the patience to build up that yellow in stages. I haven't yet mastered the art of avoiding the 'paint psychosis' when I see more paint still in the cup. 

 

 

I too struggle with this malady, I'm glad to know it has a name and I don't suffer alone.