Finnish Gladiators

[Daniel Cox]

Hi All,

Here are some Finnish Gloster Gladiator aircraft pictures;

79503

79205

20742

21535

21536

159365

159366

All images SA-kuva.

More Gladiator pictures can be found here at the Finnish Wartime Photographic Archive.

Cheers,

Daniel.

[Kari Lumppio]

Hello!

The last two are of GL-253 still operational in late July-August 1944. It flew reconnaissance then as part of temporary unit osasto Jäntti (detachment Jantti) which consisted 2-3 Gladiators, 1 Lysander (LY-120) and one subordinated Morane (MS-637 plus two pilots) from HLeLv 28. The Morane was used for artillery spotting for heavy caliber artillery. IIRC the Lysander was crash landed at the period without enemy effect.

GL-253 was damaged by AAA and also Soviet fighters in two separate incidents (and days IIRC) and is receiving new starboard lower wing. Note the insignia bottom is darkened (light blue grey). Should be similar also on the wings, at least on the upper side. The plane also very likely (sure) has the Finnish dust filter. What is not known is if the bottom half of cowling is painted in yellow. It used not to be but a Fokker CX from the same reconnaissance unit - TLeLv 16 - had the cowling bottom painted yellow during the same time period by the same depot. There might have been need to "inform" own ground trigger happy ground troops. Most of flying things on that area were enemies.

Cheers,

Kari

[tonyot]

Thanks very much for these Finnish pics,.......I noticed the link on Hyperscale and tried to search for Hurricanes, Brewsters and Gladiators but came up with next to nothing, your Finnish must be better than mine!

Cheers

Tony O

[Kari Lumppio]

Hello Tony and others too!

Try search word lento* for starters. Remember the joker sign * in the end. Plenty to watch even with that.

The original titles were made by field reporters which knew often next to nothing of the subjects and terminology. Don't know if modern reprters are any better, though.

Plane types don't bring much success generally but try using fokker*, morane*, blenheim*, curtiss* etc. Using wrongly typed bv* (should be BW = Brewster) gives a dozen photos, brewster* about thirty. Do not worry, the search is not easy even for native Finnish speaker due the anachronistic language used in the original captioning.

Cheers,

Kari

[Killingholme]

Nice photos! Can't wait for the Airfix kit this year!

[mhaselden]

The model shown in the second pic would never win an IPMS competition. Look at the interplane rigging wires - the modeller clearly touched up the paintwork after installing the rigging!