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While I tend to focus on BoB casualties for one reason or another, the area where I live continued to be attacked through 1941/43 as the Luftwaffe fighter units in northern France (JG 2 and JG 26) were assigned the role of maintaining daylight bombing, particularly on the Channel coast, using so-called "tip and run" tactics. This involved small groups of fighter-bombers (Jabos) which grew in numbers from the end of 1942, crossing the Channel at low altitude to avoid radar in order to make surprise attacks on coastal targets in particular, raids that the RAF found difficult to combat effectively. They ceased altogether in the summer of 1943 when the last raid was a mass attack again on Eastbourne. This is not to suggest that the raiders were able to return to France without loss and the subject of this post was a case in point. Unteroffizier Oswald Fischer was ordered to lead a 2-plane raid on shipping off the Sussex port of Newhaven in the late morning of the 20th of May 1942. The 2 a/c circled around the town to attack from what they hoped was the unexpected landward approach and dropped their 250 kg bombs on a corvette moored in Newhaven roads, bracketing the ship but coming under heavy AA fire. Oswald's Bf 109 F was powered by a DB liquid-cooled engine and, like many Allied and German pilots flying a/c with similar powerplants, he soon realised his coolant system had been hit and was failing, such that he wouldn't make the return to France from his low altitude. With the prospect of an uncertain future in the cold Channel waters, he turned eastwards towards Beachy Head and made a comparatively smooth force-landing on the fields inland from Beachy Head itself, perhaps 1 mile or so from my present house. Despite his best efforts to destroy his a/c, it was in relatively good condition and was taken for restoration and later flew with RAF camouflage. I couldn't resist the temptation to add a model of this in 1:48 scale to my collection of a/c that I'd put together to show the different a/c types and camo styles that were brought down around Eastbourne during the BoB and the remainder of the war. Perhaps I didn't look hard enough, but couldn't find anything at the time apart from what I believe was a fairly old Airfix moulding. Despite its age, I thought I could make something out of this that would portray Fischer's Friedrich, helped by the discovery of a Cutting Edge decal sheet that contained both the bomb unit emblem for 10 (Jabo) / JG 26, and the a/c id number. With this and an ETC bomb rack filched from a Revell/Hasegawa Bf 109 E kit, I had me the majority of the additions needed to produce a Jabo version of the basic Airfix kit. I was interested in the changes that had emerged in terms of RLM camo recommendations between the end of the BoB and 1942. Fischer's "White 11" has probably ended up looking darker than I would have liked with the RLM 74/75 mottling on the fuselage effectively covering up most of the undersurface RLM 65 extending up the fuselage. To me, all the b&w pics I saw at the time of this a/c near Beachy Head gave it this much darker hue. I've seen subsequent pics that suggest that some RLM 02 mottling had been used to present a lighter-colour finish. I've now got one of Eduard's latest Bf 109 F kits in the stash and may use it to portray another Jabo but perhaps not Fischer's. We'll see how that looks a bit lighter perhaps. The eagle-eyed amonst you may spot that I hadn't added the exhaust shrouds that are apparent in pictures of this a/c to which I didn't have access at the time I made this model. I guess I could fit those in without too much heartache. The only other mods made were painting the red diving angle lines on the inside of the cockpit canopy and some fuse wire brake lines on the u/c oleos. Even though it's an old kit, it ended up as quite a pleasing rendition of what probably remains one of the sleekest variant of the Bf 109 series from our Willy. We'll see in due time how the Eduard one compares.