Search the Community

I'm going to build the SE5a of one of my heroes, a man who did everything in life that I could have ever wished to do: James Ira "Taffy" Jones flew fighters with 74 Squadron, claimed thirty-seven enemy aircraft (1 balloon, 28 (and 1 shared) aircraft destroyed, and 6 (and 1 shared) down out of control), wrote three books, and returned to service for World War II to train pilots. 16-victory RAF ace Peter Malam Brothers recalled: "at Uxbridge there was this splendid First World War pilot, Ira Taffy Jones, who stuttered terribly. One day he stood up and said 'There is going to be a b-b-bloody wa-wa-war and you ch-chaps are going to be in it. I'll give you one piece of advice - wh-wh-when you fir-first get into combat you will be fu-fu-[redacted] fr-frightened. Ne-never forget the ch-chap in the other cock-cockpit is tw-twice as fu-[redacted] fr-frightened as you are.' I reckon he saved my life with that piece of advice. In my first combat over France, I suddenly thought, My God, the chap in that other cockpit must be having hysterics, and shot him down. But I give all credit to Taffy." The irascible Jones was an indifferent pilot who never quite mastered the art of setting the plane down (the aircraft I'm modelling was in fact written off by him in a rough landing), an excellent deflection shooter, a teetotaller during the war (but not after), and he nursed a fierce antipathy to all Germans, famously gunning a balloon observer down as he dangled in his 'chute: "My habit of attacking Huns dangling from their parachutes led to many arguments in the mess. Some officers, of the Eton and Sandhurst type, thought it was 'unsportsmanlike' to do it. Never having been to a public school, I was unhampered by such considerations of form. I just pointed out that there was a bloody war on, and that I intended to avenge my pals." During the interwar period, Jones met Hermann Goering while serving as personal pilot to Sir Sefton Brancker: "Sir Sefton said "'I wonder if you two ever met in an air fight, Taffy.' 'He wouldn't be here now, sir, if we had met,' I retorted. Brancker laughed, but Goering did not." Taffy also idolized his squadronmate Edward "Mick" Mannock and disliked and distrusted the Canadian VC winner Billy Bishop; The first biographer (perhaps hagiographer) of Mannock, Jones played a key part in the postwar score calculations that left Mannock officially the top-scoring RFC ace of WWI. Perhaps most famously, during the Battle of Britain, Jones pursued a Ju88 in an unarmed Hawker Henley, firing a Very pistol at it. As you can see, Taffy Jones was quite a character, a man who lead a life straight out of a Boy's Own serial, and I've always felt an immense fondness for him. When I learned that Pheon did a 1/72 decal sheet that included markings for his plane, I knew I had to have it. And so here we are: I'm going to try rigging this with Uschi ultrafine rigging thread. I tested it last night on "one I'd done earlier", and it seemed to work okay for me: I'm using the Roden kit, of course, and if you've ever built one of their World War I kits in 1/72 before you've perhaps winced and nodded. If you haven't, well Roden kits are seemingly designed to ace in-box reviews, with beautiful surface detail and incredible parts and variant options. They are also tooled in Hell with the CAD done by the Devil himself, and they suffer from poor fit, fragile parts, and decals that explode into a million fragments on contact with water. Their instructions leave a little to be desired as well. Behold Part 34A on the instruction drawing, then cast your eyes upon the actual part 34A. Hardly recognize them as the same piece, would you? I'm an idiot, so I expect this build will be a challenge.