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A10 Wins Battle of Chiswick


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Well, I've beaten another one into submission, this time Italeri's 1/72 Warthog, Kit No. 1376.  I've been fancying a Hog for a while, it's the baddest looking thing in the air, so nasty it makes a Lancaster look like VIckers Viscount.   As usual, my dedication to scale, accuracy and detail is spot-on completely absent but what I lack in skill, I make up for in incompetence.

IMG_1699

 

The camo was brushed on freehand, attempting to follow the pattern (Pattern? You mean it's not just random splotches?) but inevitably it's slightly inaccurate quite a bit off not even close but it looks like camo so that's as far as I go.

 

I don't bother with the add-on photo-etch detail stuff in the theory that you don't try to gold plate a Timex but I do try to get it as neat as I can with what the box provides.  I think this is my best office so far.  Colours are all wrong but to the untrained eye... Well, the missus has no problem with it!

IMG_1697

 

Yes, I know the canopy frame is supposed to be camo but I think the gloss black looks badder... Here at the Shepherds Bush Air force we're a bit casual about such things.  I even got brave enough to paint a couple of little boxes inside that mysterious door under the cockpit.

IMG_1694

 

This may all seem simple stuff to you pros but bear in mind I still dislocate my arm patting myself on the back when I can pull off making a set of safety belts out of tape.

 

I love a shark mouth on an American jet...

IMG_1696

 

...but the next Hog has to have a Hog mouth!

 

But this particular plane....

IMG_1695

 

This specific Warthog...

Full w KS 1

 

Is the aircraft that won...

Full w KS 2

 

.... The Battle of Chiswick!

 

Things were not looking good in West London.  The Yuppie Barbarians from Richmond were marching on Shepherds Bush in an attempt to take Westfield Mall.  

 

The terrifying charge of the Yuppie Cavalry

Yuppie Cavalry

 

They'd been softening us up with wave after wave of Range Rover heavy bombers launched out of their base in Twickenham, raining rugby balls down on us and burying Goldhawk Road under a sea of leather and rubber.  The QPR Anti-Aircraft unit in South Africa Stadium countered with their Gatling Frankfurter Guns, capable of firing 4300 hot dogs a minute (or 5600 of the smaller New York System Hot Weiners) but the Rovers were fitted with highly efficient stealth technology and the Rear-Mounted Jones-Gascoigne Countermeasures Package so hardly any were hit. 

 

A formation of 21 Stealth Range Rovers swoops low over Goldhawk Road station

Goldhawk

 

The Jones-Gascoigne Countermeasures Package in action

Jones Gazza

 

After the Range Rover attack, the Yuppies' allies in Acton sent supersonic BMW Minicabs to strafe us with Pete Townshend's guitar picks.  Squadron Leader A.C. Plonk, C/O of 6 7/8 Squadron based on Shepherds Bush Green, sent our Black Cab Interceptors to engage but, despite their superior navigational systems, tighter turn radius and advanced sarcasm, they were unable to bring down the swifter Beemers till the damage had already been done. 

 

After the guitar pick attack, the burnt out wreckage of a Shepherds Bush F35 smoulders next to a collapsed hangar.

F35

 

Our market stalls were in ruins, our Reliant Robins were destroyed and 6 7/8 Squadron was down to its last two Chipmunks and a Tiger Moth but the Yuppies in their Prius tanks kept rolling inexorably East up the A316.  If they took the Premier Inn at the Chiswick Roundabout all would be lost.  We had asked for help from our northern allies in Enfield but ever since the Great Football War of North London when Enfield sided with Highbury, Tottenham has denied them use of airspace and their Royal Enfield Fast Attack Jets, even with BSA drop tanks, lacked the range to make the detour round the M25.  There was only one thing left to do... Call in the Americans.  Fortunately there was an American air base on Wormwood Scrubs under the command of Lt. Col. C. Harrison Yeager, grandson of the famous............. Chester H. Yeager of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, managing editor of the Providence Journal from 1956 till 1971.

 

Lt. Col. C. Harrison Yeager at the controls of his A10

Harry Yeager

 

As soon as Squadron Leader Plonk called him, Colonel Yeager, in typically generous American fashion, leapt at the opportunity to help a friend in need.  He ordered his A10 loaded with maximum firepower.  He ignored subtlety, bypassed overkill and went straight to "When-I'm-done-wiv-you-I'm-comin'-after-yer-family".  He led the attack himself, the subwoofer thunder of his two Harley-Davidson V-Twins rattling the windows of the BBC building and aimed his trusty Warthog westward.  On his first pass he dropped four 300lb Strip Club Doorman MkIV H.E. Bombs (with acoustic guidance) and on the second he released four GTGs (cluster bomb canisters of giggling teenage girls... dumb bombs, of course) but to no avail, the tanks kept silently (Prius, remember?) rolling. 

 

Acoustically-Guided 300lb SCD MkIV

SCD

 

GTG Cluster Bomb (With iPhone Guidance System)

GTG

 

It was then he decided to deploy his most feared weapon, the Armitage-Shanks Kitchen Sink MkII (Series 3).  It had never before been used in battle, the designers were still unsure of its full capabilities and the UN didn't even know if it was legal. 

 

An A-S KS MkII (Series 3) hangs on Harry Yeager's wing next to a pair of Sidewinders

KS 4

 

But the effect was immediate.  The specially modified taps created an EMP that knocked out the tanks' engines, the contents of the U-bend dissolved the Yuppies' Rolexes and the porcelain shrapnel ripped their Yves St. Laurent uniforms to shreds.  The Yuppies immediately panicked and fled back to the desolate badlands south of the river.  They haven't been seen east of Twickenham since but have made a couple of forays to their north, at one point briefly occupying the Airport Bowl in Hounslow but their morale was still in such tatters from their humiliation in Chiswick they were driven out by a boy scout (second class) wielding a pen-knife with two blades, a corkscrew and a thing for taking stones out of horses' hooves.

 

Eric Drimble (13) of Hounslow flashes a victory sign after liberating the Airport Bowl

Eric Drimble

 

For his bravery and leadership, Colonel Yeager was awarded the MG and bar (a 1973 Spridget and the Conningham Arms on Uxbridge Road, to be precise) and The Queen, in an unprecedented act, made him the Earl of Hammersmith and awarded him an OBE, making him the first American Earlobe in Britain.

 

Harry Yeager Receives Honours From Queen

Yeager and Queen

 

And a final picture of Harry's plane with the soft filter... If it can make William Shatner handsome....

thumbnail soft

 

The above nonsense was born when the missus looked at the box art.  "What's all that stuff under the wings?" she said.  "Weapons," I said,  "Those are air-to-air missiles, the brown ones are gravity bombs, the green ones are smart bombs and the big white things are air-to-ground missiles.  And the black thing sticking out of the nose is a gun that will shred a forest."  "Oh." she said, "Everything but the kitchen sink, eh?"

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Nice build and very informative, historically accurate account of the battle of Chiswick, which for some reason I don't remember reading about – I must have had a particularly long snooze that day. I assume that's the conventional tactical kitchen sink rather than the feared B&Q nuclear option?

 

What the hell are you smoking Uncle Pete?!!!!!!!!  :hypnotised:

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9 hours ago, ColinChipmunkfan said:

Didn't I see you once with Colonel Bloodnock and Eccles?

I blagged the picture of the boy scout by googling "bluebottle"... I think Harry Secombe drew it.  And, yes, I'm a HUGE fan of Milligan and co!

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3 minutes ago, Fredag said:

Great entertainment (well,it is supposed to be a fun hobby). Get well soon...;)

Thanks, mate.  Among pros I know my builds are not up to snuff but you’re the only people on the planet that share my interest in this oddball pursuit and I want to show my stuff to SOMEONE!  I do enjoy sharing a laugh, though, and take the liberty to do so here.   Glad it gets received in a positive way. 

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Brilliant!

 

I would say I'd heard of the battle but I'm still suffering after being attacked by a batter pudding the last time I went to Bexhill on sea.

 

Does strang things to you....

 

Geoff

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