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Flying guerilla - Flugzeug 1/72 MFI-9


Parrahs

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So my previous build had a bit of a story to it. This one's probably more of a story with a bit of a build taped on. As for that story, it follows three different streams and eventually merge together.

 

First there's the aircraft in question. Malmö Flygindustri's MFI-9 was a small and light little aircraft from the early sixties. It was also license built by Bölkow as the Bo 208, and SAAB ended up making a somewhat enlarged variant called Safari. A military trainer variant was also created and ten of these were rented for trials by the Swedish air force in 1966. Eventually the choice was made to buy the Scottish Aviation Bulldog instead, and the gently used aircraft were returned to MFI.

 

The second place to start the story is with the Swedish count Carl Gustaf von Rosen.

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Born in 1909 he appears to have been something of the family's black sheep on account of his political views, specifically being very much not a nazi. When you're father runs a nazi party and your aunt is married to Hermann Göring that can apparently make things a bit awkward at times. Instead he took to flying (possibly inspired by his uncle in law, politics be damned), with a strong tendency to do so for what he probably considered worthy causes and often without much concern for his own well being. Starting out as a stunt pilot for a flying circus (an actual circus, not the von Richthofen kind). When Italy invaded Ethiopia he went there as an ambulance flight pilot for the red cross, and got some mustard gas burns courtesy of the Regia Aeronautica. After that war he got a civilian job with KLM. When the USSR invaded Finland he bought a DC-2, converted it to a bomber and flew one operational mission with it against the Russians. He would later help evacuate the Dutch government when Germany invaded the low countries, tried to join the RAF (apparently they didn't want to have Göring's niece around) and eventually spent the rest of the war flying for a Swedish airline company. Notable events after the war includes 11 years as the chief instructor for the Ethiopian air force, and flying the UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld around some during the Congo Crisis.

 

Third, we have the Biafran war. Nigeria was (is?) one of those colonial patchworks, and upon its independence in the early sixties things got a bit heated, culminating in full war (civil depending on who you ask) when the south-eastern part of the country declared independence as Biafra in 1967. The old colonial power, England, ended up supporting the Nigerian government with plenty of ammunition and armoured vehicles perhaps largely to ensure BP's continued access to the oil fields near/in Biafra. The USSR saw a chance to gain some influence in the region, and supplied Nigeria with Mig-17 and Il-28 aircraft, which mostly ended up flown by various mercenaries. France thought they could perhaps also gain some influence in previously English-dominated lands, and gave some limited help to Biafra. Strange bedfellows... While Biafra had decent production of overall calories, they were heavily dependent on imports for protein. Nigeria blockaded those imports  in an effort to starve out Biafra, leading to a massive famine that attracted the wrold's attention and got a number of western organisation to start flying in aid, despite attacks on these flights by the Nigerian air force.

 

Here the streams start to merge, as one of the pilots who showed up was of course von Rosen. Being somewhat appalled by the way the famine and Nigerian air raids hit the Biafran civilian population he would at first try to get some substantial, official aid form various countries in the west, but his diplomatic efforts failed. Instead he noticed that Biafra had pilots, but at that point no aircraft. So he recommended them to try a "mini-COIN" concept, with very light aircraft flying between the treetops on lightning raids from hidden airfields in the jungle. To prove the concept he himself bought nine of the MFI-9 aircraft the Swedish air force had returned to MFI (with the intent being kept very secret), and talked a pair of Swedish pilots into helping out. The aircraft were shipped to Gabon were they were assembled, painted up, had French rocket pods installed and the passenger seat swapped for an extra 80l fuel tank (at full load these small aircraft could only barely climb up into the hot African air) before flying over into Biafra. Due to the starving children of Biafra being a major part of the pilot's motivation, and the size of their aircraft, these modified MFI-9 were called "Biafra Babies".

 

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With this and a local pilot they then carried out four "proof of concept" raids, primarily aimed at the Nigerian air force. Perhaps half a dozen aircraft were destroyed on the ground, mainly Mig-17, more damaged along with trucks, AA-sites and so on, with an important power plant and a major oil pumping station also being hit (something that struck Nigeria right in the wallet), with no aircraft lost or pilots wounded. After this the two other Swedish pilots returned home, von Rosen remained as an advisor and instructor, and another Swedish pilots showed up for a while to help keep operations going while the Biafran pilots were schooled in on the aircraft. At this point the aircraft also switched over to mostly flying "free hunts" against Nigerian ground forces just past the front lines. AT rockets are to have been used exclusively, to minimize the risk of collateral damage. In the end though a Biafra were thousands died of starvation every day could not hold off a British-backed Nigeria, and surrendered in 1970.

 

 

So, on to the actual kit then.

 

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It's very much a short run affair, tooled somewhere back in the eighties. vacuform canopy, some white metal details. Luckily this included the rocket pods, despite there being no mention of Biafra on the box, since I haven't' found anything really suitable from any third party. The decal sheet also includes Biafran markings, but since these weren't added on at first and given the very yellowed sheet I'll be skipping those.

 

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Massive sprue gates, so-so details, and around 2mm thick fuselage sides. Oh my. With the gear being very much in front, the amount of nose weight recommended by the manual is... don't bother, just put a clear plug under the rear. Points for honesty I guess. Or if you absolutely must, lighten the rear as much as possible and then squeeze in as much lead as you can in the front, experienced modellers only (you can't stop me!). Doing some math on the torque balance I think I can do this, and so the carving began. The fuselage was taken form about 4.33g to just under 4g, then some pretty hefty gouges had to be taken out of the front as well to fit the engine and instrument panel.  The edges of the walls were also thinned down around the cockpit (as the manual recommends) since having them be about 140mm thick in scale probably wasn't going to be the best look. After that I went back to sanding out material form the rear, until just over a fifth of the fuselage's mass had been removed altogether.

 

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With that to help aim I squeezed in about 2.5g of lead, and then added some extra white glue more or less for good luck. The red marks where to show where the engine and panel would end up touching the other half so the lead slug could be put in a suitable position. The cockpit walls are perhaps rather coarse, but the canopy seems like it'll give us some "help" there. The even rougher rear parts will be hidden by the seat and extra fuel tank. Now it's time to get a bit unconventional, and...

 

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...glue the fuselage together before painting up the cockpit. This is because the inside edges of the fuselage floor came quite heavily chamfered from the factory, meaning I have a huge ditch in the floor to fill up. Luckily the instrument panel is easily accessible, and the pilot's seat will also be easy to install afterwards. The extra fuel tank and control stick will have to be scratch built, maybe a rear cockpit wall as well. Otherwise this will be an OOB build, or at least with nothing added. Plenty has already been removed after all.

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6 hours ago, pinky coffeeboat said:

Very interesting introduction. It looks a tiny model but the exterior detail doesn't look too bad. I'll follow this build. Thanks for sharing.

 

Jeff

Yes, given the kind of kit it is I'm quite happy with the surface details. A bit of a touch-up with the scriber in the panel lines and it should be good to go. The longitudinal ridges on top and bottom of the rear fuselage (maybe not very visible in the photos, but it's the same affair as on the sides) are doomed though. They'll be long gone before I've filled and sanded the joint flush. We'll see what I can think of there.

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An interesting and detailed backstory: I love a build like this that opens up a part of the past to scrutiny. Look forward to seeing your rendition of this aircraft.

Good luck!

Tony.

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14 hours ago, Parrahs said:

huge ditch in the floor to fill up

An interesting backstory and aircraft i've never heard of. As far as 'ditch is concerned, you could have made a floor and stuck your seats and stuff onto that.

 

Stuart

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25 minutes ago, Parrahs said:

That does sound worth looking into.

 

I did exactly this on an Albatross seaplane - the fuselage join would have been very noticeable but creating a false floor from thin plasticard also allowed me to do all the pedals, wires etc much more easily, then dropped the lot in as a unit and hid the join at a panel line. OK, so the floor is now 0.25mm too shallow but you'd never know. Worked beautifully!

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 Very interesting build! Have been wanting to do the same for years now. There's a great book called "Shadows", Nigerian/Biafran airwar. If you don't have it I would recommend it!

 I'll be following this build with great interest!

 Paul

 

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1 hour ago, Pauly Boy said:

 Very interesting build! Have been wanting to do the same for years now. There's a great book called "Shadows", Nigerian/Biafran airwar. If you don't have it I would recommend it!

 I'll be following this build with great interest!

 Paul

 

That's a great book, another highly recommended read.

 

Jeff

Edited by pinky coffeeboat
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  • 2 weeks later...

So a generous amount of filler and sanding later and now the fuselage halves have agreed to kinda come to a compromise as to what aircraft they are. A side effect of that is that the ridges on top (much like those along the sides) were no longer anywhere to be seen. So some sprue was stretched, glued in place, blended in a bit with first thin cement and then Mr Surfacer before being sanded down a notch.

 

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After a quick spot of primer was tossed on it revealed itself as rather thick and excessive, but still, closer to right looking than if it simply had been missing I'd say.

After a quick tough-up of various bits with the scriber (the panel lines often being somewhat shallow and indistinct) wings, fin and stabiliser was added, and then it was time for the front gear. Specifically, gouging a hole in the front fuselage for it since nothing such existed.

 

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As for the main gear legs, well, if you look closely at the aircraft end of them here

 

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You may note that the one on the right has a small knob on top that the left lacks. Seems like a bit of a mis-cast, with the knob being something you could drill a hole for in the plane to attach. With that lacking on one side I simply snipped off the knob on the other one, glued on some wire for reinforcement on the inside of them, and drilled holes for that wire in the plane.

 

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Then on they go and... oh dear.

 

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A bum dragger it is? And that despite all the work to the contrary. On the plus side putting the prop in (another hole drilled) makes it able to stand on all three legs, and that despite one of the two blades being broken. Still, as I'm currently tinkering wiht the extra fuel tank that'll sit in the passengers seat I've crammed about half a gram of lead into that one as well. Hopefully that and the whole prop together will get the nose wheel down even when the rocket pods go on.

As you can see the cockpit ha also been painted, the photos I have suggest dark green for some of the babies and a kinda plywood-looking red-brown for others, so I grabbed some Tamiya hull red. I've seen no colour photos with the seats visible, so I left that grey. And with nothing for the fuel tank but its volume that'll just be a suitably sized box painted dull aluminium I think.

 

For a bit more on the historical background I also found a short interview (in English) with von Rosen on youtube about Biafra:

 

 

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Got the extra fuel tank in, along with a very rough centre console made out of lead. With nothing mentioned or shown in pictures I went for an aluminium tank. Last time around I also missed mentioning the spinal fillet made with plasticard, included in the kit for that very purpose.

 

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Some paint on the parts that the canopy would cover, matched kinda sorta (though somewhat over expectations really) to the available photos. MrPaint, one drop Mrp176 to two drops Mrp177 I think it was.

 

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A quick bit of panel lining wash here before the canopy was on, and that was most o the assembly sorted. At this point things sped up a good bit, as we're past "beating an ancient short run kit into shape" and on to "painting up a really small aircaft with a not terribly complex paint scheme". Belly first, nothing to go on here really beyond it being some light grey.

 

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Some time later

 

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And so on.

 

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Light green was once again two drops of Mrp177, now with one drop of Mrp223. Throughout the painting process the main gear fell off, got bent, bent back again, and so on a few times, On the plus side it's not slightly less bum-graviting than it was before. So with the propeller and rockets still not attached I think there's some hope, the latter are a lot heavier but sit with their centre of mass just slightly behind the main gear, so the proper may have enough of a lever to keep things where we want it.

 

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As I'm going for the early career of these aircraft, the first three raids when von Rosen was one of the pilots, there's no decals to apply and little weathering to think about either, and as such all that was left was some varnish and a bit of panel lining. And so it's done.

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Tail up! Gagarin helpfully dropping by to help show how large it isn't.

 

Some more photos in the expected place:

 

 

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