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Good seated pilots in 1/48 or 1/72?


Kilroy1988

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Hello,

 

It seems my previous topic was deleted because I am in need of something specific. However, I can't post in the "wanted" area and am mostly just looking for suggestions which I believe can serve as reference for other users as well. So to make the topic more broad and relatable, I am interested in knowing if there are any good options for seated WWII pilots in 1/48 or 1/72 scale that seem intent on the act of flying? Luftwaffe, Soviet, British, American... Whatever. I see so many figurines that are in rather casual positions, even if they're meant to be in a cockpit!

 

Thanks!

 

-Gregory

 

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Hi, Gregory. 

 

Have a look at PJ Productions figures. Not cheap, but very nicely made. They're a French company, but I would take a guess that they have a U.S. distributor. If they're no good, ICM and Eduard do some pilot and ground-crew figure sets in 1/48th, of various nationalities. 

 

Hope this helps. 

 

Chris. 

 

PS: Also try Italeri. 

Edited by spruecutter96
Adding some info.
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I noticed your content count is at 39. You should be at the minimum of 100 soon enough so will be able to post in the wanted section then. As for figures im sorry im not very helpful. I almost never use the pilots myself. I only build aircraft in static positions not flight.  

 

Dennis

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In 1/48 Airfix do some well sculpted figures with separate arms,  and these are items liable to end up in many a spares box.

Same is true for 70's era Monogram kits, more for US crew figures.  Thinking about it similar era Tamiya kits will provide you Japanese crew.

If you want specifics, i can dig out examples of ones I thought were good.

HTH

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Thanks for the recommendations, folks.

 

I think I will probably be able to cover my interest in 1/72 figures fairly easily using the boxed sets, but 1/48 still seems hard except for the joyful fact that such detailed figures are available from some makers. As for my current project, I ended up going with a BF 109 pilot from Aires that I found on Ebay and will try to pose him less casually with a bit of modifications. Cheers!

 

-Gregory

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Reading your post, I was just about to almost exactly post what Troy said - as you're US based, you may be able to get access to someone's spare box on Monogram figures. Monogram always had a reputation for their excellent figures, thoug the later kits were more concerned with ground crew and "prefilght check" pilots. Just the other day I checked an example of their 1/48 Ju 87 and it has a flying pilot with separate left arm. The right arm as moulded looks rather naughty, though, with the top of the control column in a rather ambiguous position. Anyway, certainly workable. My feeling is they are slightly smaller than scale, but that may be of help in getting them to fit in confined cockpits. Another kit with a nicely sculpted pilot is the Tamiya P-51, though it's a single part, and may be bigger allround. More possibilities are in the original Airfix 48th kits, they are not quite as sharply sculpted as Monogram's but should look good with some refinement. As I recall them, they have separate arms - not sure though if the 109 one has different kit to the Spit's and Hurri's.

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6 hours ago, dragonlanceHR said:

Aerobonus has a good range of resin pilots complete with seats.

 

Vedran.

 

Thanks Vedran,

 

That's what I ended up going for with the current project, through AIRES. The 1/48 options that they have look like some of the nicest, but again most of the poses seem rather casual, even if they are seated in a cockpit. Alas!

 

Are you located in Istria, by chance? My mother is Croatian and I spent forty days in your country in 2016, coming into Zagreb then working on a farm in Lika for three weeks before traveling through Dalmatia. I still have family on Hvar so I visited them and my grandmother's ancestral village there. I missed Istria, though, and it is one of the places I want to see most! :)

 

-Gregory

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20 hours ago, tempestfan said:

More possibilities are in the original Airfix 48th kits, they are not quite as sharply sculpted as Monogram's but should look good with some refinement. As I recall them, they have separate arms - not sure though if the 109 one has different kit to the Spit's and Hurri's.

After a ponder, i remembered,  in the case of the old Spitfire Vb, bf109 and Hurricane (late 70's kits) the pilot figures are the same figures scaled down as the respective 1/24th kits. 

 

The Hurricane pilot is a bit stiff, but the Spitfire and 109 are very neatly modelled 

this is the 1/24th Spitfire pilot  ( alot easier to find images of the 1/24th pilots)

03.jpg

 

1/24th 109E pilot

224758300_de223d8901_b.jpg

 

I think the old tool Stuka had the same deal, pilot scaled down from the 1/24th ones,  and the 1/48th Mosquito crew have the neat touch of the navigator looking at a map

 

the 1977 era Monogram P-51D  kits has an excellent pilot 

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/hyperscale/recommendation-for-1-48-pilot-figure-t203897.html

Monogram_P-51D_Mustang_Pilot_resized.JPG

Similar quality seated crew figures are in some of the Monogram bomber kits I think, its been a long time since I thought about those.  (ironically the ones I had 'back then' still have more presence in memory) 

 

 as you are in the US,  you may want to ask on a site with a larger US membership,  like Hypercale Plane Trading,  as has been noted.   When you reach 100 posts here you can ask in our wanted section, as  these will be in many a spares box, and a few figures won't cost that much to send to the US.

Also,  may worth looking out for the old kits, as it  maybe as cheap to buy the entire kit as it would be to get a resin figure....

 

HTH

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The problem with a lot of figures in models is quite often the clothing and flying kit can be wrong. Not a biggie if it doesn't concern you but at the same time if you're trying to be super accurate with details of the aircraft by spending enormous effort reshaping and detailing and making sure colours are as close to 100% accurate as possible, then it's possibly worth going the extra mile with any aircrew and knowing what they wore and in what theatre of operations.

 

For example, Tamiya's Spit I and Vb include figures wearing Irvin jackets which for the Vb is completely inaccurate and for the I very unlikely after the Battle of France. After the winter/spring of 1940 and despite what some feature films might like to depict, it became exceedingly rare to see Irvins being worn as operational flying clothing within Fighter Command - they were ungainly in the small confines of cockpits and the collar impaired the view behind the pilot (in fact at least one squadron commander during the Phoney War forbade his pilots from wearing them due to this). They thus became nearly exclusively used by fighter pilots as a warm layer when on the ground waiting at dispersals, etc. They were reissued to some fighter units with the 2TAF during the exceedingly cold winter of 1944/45 but once again only for use on the ground at the poorly equipped airfields on the Continent. The image of the RAF fighter boy in his sheepskin Irvin has become the public idea of him but in reality it's not terribly accurate for most of the war. 

 

A Spitfire I pilot in winter 1939/40 could have worn an Irvin but a pilot flying in the Battle of Britain was flying in his Service Dress and sometimes on very hot days in July only his shirt sleeves (sadly one of the reasons some pilots suffered exceedingly serious burns to their arms and upper chest).

 

A Spitfire Vb pilot flying over Europe at this stage of the war would have been been flying in Battle Dress with several under layers depending on the time of year, woollen underwear, jumper or even the awful looking Frock, Aircrew knitted garment.

 

You can see the same with USAAF aircrew. A fighter pilot flying in the ETO over western and northern Europe would almost always be wearing an A-2 jacket over either a flight suit or his regulation upper clothing and "pinks" or M1937 trousers. In 1944 B-10 jackets became frequently seen especially in colder months and in 1945, occasionally the newly introduced B-15 jackets. It was very, very rare for USAAF fighter pilots in this theatre to wear only a flight suit like an A-4 without a jacket despite manufacturers often depicting their pilot figures as such.

 

There's obviously lots more that can be covered, RAF Bomber and Coastal Commands, USAAF over the Med and in the Pacific, USN flyers and aircrew but hopefully that helps get some thinking not just about what colour the oleo legs were on such and such and is this colour as close as possible to the under surfaces, but also if you're using a pilot or aircrew figures, what they would have been wearing in where and when you're depicting your model.

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Troy and Smithy,

 

Thanks for all of the additional thoughts! Flight suits and the historical accuracy doesn't concern me too much yet, as I'm still fresh into the game and am not taking the time to alter kits OOB very much, if at all, even if there are inaccuracies in some regards. However, I am interested in at least knowing what the appropriate gear should be, and am learning slowly! I imagine that, rabbit hole that modeling is (as with most other history-related crafts) I'm sure I'll eventually be doing whatever is necessary to make the figures look accurate as well as the aircraft.

 

As far as sourcing my airmen goes, I'll definitely be returning to this thread for references with future projects. Thanks again, and cheers!

 

-Gregory

Edited by Kilroy1988
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7 hours ago, Kilroy1988 said:

However, I am interested in at least knowing what the appropriate gear should be, and am learning slowly!

 

That's a great place to start Greg and getting to know what you're modelling is the first step to getting better at it.

 

My point was really about advanced modellers, who go absolutely mad about details on the aircraft they are modelling, down to using aftermarket detailing sets and going to enormous pains to change the smallest details on aircraft kits in order to make them more accurate, and then if using aircrew figure(s) just plonk any from the same service in the model or diorama, even though they are often entirely inaccurate. And you can't necessarily trust aftermarket figures for that matter either.

 

If we use the Spitfire pilot in Troy's post above as an example (and Troy this is by no means meant as anything against you, it was purely that you'd posted the figures above and so they were at hand to comment on) as this is apparently a 1/24 scale figure and therefore fairly visible in the finished model.

 

The goggles are utterly odd, looking like a mix of WWI era Triplex ones and WWII US issue B-7 ones, the figure also appears to be wearing Battle Dress due to the collar and cuffs but the rank is shown on the sleeves which is not correct for BD but is from Service Dress. The Mae West is diabolical, bearing absolutely no resemblance to something such as a 1941 Pattern which is possibly what it perhaps wants to depict. And I'm not even going to start on the harnesses.

 

Now this might all sound pedantic but if you're going to fret about a fuselage being 2mm too long aft of the cockpit, or if the canopy framing is slightly out of alignment, or the wing trailing edges are slightly too thick, or the radiator grill has slightly the wrong pattern and all those other things which cause vast amounts of handwringing then spare a thought for the figures that you use in a build and try and give them the same amount of effort for accuracy as for the aircraft itself.

 

 

Edited by Smithy
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  • 10 months later...
On 1/17/2019 at 10:58 PM, Smithy said:

 

Now this might all sound pedantic but if you're going to fret about a fuselage being 2mm too long aft of the cockpit, or if the canopy framing is slightly out of alignment, or the wing trailing edges are slightly too thick, or the radiator grill has slightly the wrong pattern and all those other things which cause vast amounts of handwringing then spare a thought for the figures that you use in a build and try and give them the same amount of effort for accuracy as for the aircraft itself.

 

 

Bumping this to give some visual assistance.

Last September, the good folks at Duxford had a live exhibition explaining exactly what the type of uniforms, equipment, and even footwear are appropriate for both Fighter Command & Bomber Command crew.

y4mKA5eZAY5lEhqBEgfHSWHcZEifB_Rs3yIB9u65

 

Extreme left & center are more appropriate styles for 1940 Fighter Command & Bomber crew respectively, the brown sheepskin flying boots were introduced in late 1940 but many (especially fighter pilots) kept their black leather boots far longer. The GiB is showing the later bomber crew kit, our chap in RAF blue on the right the more modern fighter kit.

 

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11 minutes ago, alt-92 said:

Bumping this to give some visual assistance.

Last September, the good folks at Duxford had a live exhibition explaining exactly what the type of uniforms, equipment, and even footwear are appropriate for both Fighter Command & Bomber Command crew.

y4mKA5eZAY5lEhqBEgfHSWHcZEifB_Rs3yIB9u65

 

Extreme left & center are more appropriate styles for 1940 Fighter Command & Bomber crew respectively, the brown sheepskin flying boots were introduced in late 1940 but many (especially fighter pilots) kept their black leather boots far longer. The GiB is showing the later bomber crew kit, our chap in RAF blue on the right the more modern fighter kit.

 

 

Sorry but they are all in early war iterations of uniform and flying kit. Straight off the bat, all the parachutes, Mae Wests and harnesses are all early war.

 

The "chap in RAF blue on the right the more modern fighter kit" is actually wearing Service Dress so this immediately marks him prior to the introduction of Suits, Aircrew and later Battle Dress and the boots are 1940 Pattern, same as being worn on the extreme right.

 

The fellow in the early two panel pattern Irvin is wearing a white Prestige suit something only seen in Fighter Command and had pretty much disappeared by spring 1941.

 

The colour of boots really doesn't have a bearing, the brown ones as I mention above are 1940 Pattern. The black ones on the left are 1936 Pattern boots which were also made in small numbers in brown (mostly by Bedggood, VIC, Australia). Black boots were also issued later, eg with the later pattern "escape" boots.

 

There is a lot of detail with RAF flying kit but one of the most obvious ones to distinguish between early war and mid/later war is the use of Service Dress as opposed to Battle Dress where the tunic is a different pattern and waist length. With SD rank is indicated on the sleeves, on BD it's on the epaulettes.

 

Uniforms and flying kit can be a bit tricky but as I mentioned all the moons ago above, if you're going to enormous lengths to ensure accuracy with your aircraft it's worth doing a little research to make sure the fellow standing beside it is historically correct as well.

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9 minutes ago, alt-92 said:

Well, glad to be corrected then. At least we have some visual clues to match.

 

No problem and no disrespect intended. I work in historic aviation (and flying kit) so have more than a passing interest in it.

 

I'm happy to help if anyone has specific questions about uniforms and flying kit (I specialise in WWI RFC/RNAS/RAF, WWII RAF and WWII USAAC/USAAF).

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...and then...and then - as Smithy says, do some research.

 

A few years ago, I was going through some of my Dad's very few wartime photos with him. He flew Spitfires with 253 Sqn in Italy and Yugoslavia and I noticed on one photo - which showed four pilots at readiness on the island of Vis in early 1945 - not one was wearing the same kit: indeed I thought that most looked like varieties of army uniforms.

 

When I asked Dad, he said that  - yes, they habitually flew in army khaki rather than RAF blue because they knew that if you came down in enemy-occupied territory, your best bet was to join up with the Partisans, who eventually might be able to get you back out. This wasn't altruism by the Partisans: they would expect you to fight for them while in their care. This meant that you needed to blend in with them and khaki was better than blue for this. Similarly, no sheepskin flying boots, the best hiking/walking boots you could find were what you wore. Additionally, they would expect you to have a weapon with you so you would be useful to them: some flew with a service revolver but Dad said he always flew with a Sten gun in pieces stitched into his jacket so he could be really useful.

 

Kevin

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Just now, KevinK said:

...and then...and then - as Smithy says, do some research.

 

A few years ago, I was going through some of my Dad's very few wartime photos with him. He flew Spitfires with 253 Sqn in Italy and Yugoslavia and I noticed on one photo - which showed four pilots at readiness on the island of Vis in early 1945 - not one was wearing the same kit: indeed I thought that most looked like varieties of army uniforms.

 

When I asked Dad, he said that  - yes, they habitually flew in army khaki rather than RAF blue because they knew that if you came down in enemy-occupied territory, your best bet was to join up with the Partisans, who eventually might be able to get you back out. This wasn't altruism by the Partisans: they would expect you to fight for them while in their care. This meant that you needed to blend in with them and khaki was better than blue for this. Similarly, no sheepskin flying boots, the best hiking/walking boots you could find were what you wore. Additionally, they would expect you to have a weapon with you so you would be useful to them: some flew with a service revolver but Dad said he always flew with a Sten gun in pieces stitched into his jacket so he could be really useful.

 

Kevin

 

Ah, if we get into flying kit and working dress in the Med and North Africa (and that's not even mentioning India/Burma/the Pacific, etc) that's another different kettle of fish, and even more fun and varied!

 

One of my relatives flew out of North Africa after having flown with Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain and the 1941 offensive over Europe, and the difference in what he was wearing not just from what he wore in Britain but even compared to the variation with his squadron mates is dizzying!

 

RAF Fighter and Bomber Commands flying out of the UK (and later from the Continent) are much more straightforward than those flying from slightly warmer and more "rugged" climes

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