Re: Spinners' Strike Fighters Thread

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Gloster Meteor F.6 - 192 Filo, Türk Hava Kuvvetleri, 1956






Black tail just to ring the changes!

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Gloster Celeste Mk.52 - No.331 Squadron, Royal Norwegian Air Force, 1954






All the recent Meteor activity has reminded me of the Gloster CXP-1001 seen in the Putnam book alongside some pretty tasty two-seat swept wing naval Meteors, the Gloster Transonic Research Aircraft and Javelin's with 40mm cannon! Anyway, I've revisited this DAT 3D model and thought I'd do it in RNoAF markings somewhere roughly in the F-84G timeline. The finflash is decidedly non-standard and out of me own 'ed. As I've got an RAF camo for the CXP-1001 I might put these markings on that or possibly go Dutch.

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Heinkel He 343 'Donnerkämpfer' - Jagdgeschwader 7, Luftwaffe, 1946









Following a request made over at the DAT forum, this is the Gloster CXP-1001 dressed up as a Luft'46 bird. I don't know why I chose it to be a Heinkel machine, perhaps it was subconscious because their ground-breaking He 178 and He 280 jets are often overlooked. Anyway, as I've made templates for the CXP-1001 this wasn't too difficult but I'm no expert on Luftwaffe camouflage and markings so it is a bit generic.

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Heinkel He-344 'Schwertfisch' - Jagdverband 44, Luftwaffe, 1947






Over the years I've shown a few La-15 Fantail 'what ifs' and this one is another Luft'46 (or Luft'47!) machine. It's an older 3D model with a couple of tears in it that cause decal bleed and the way that it was mapped forced me to abandon doing upper wing camo but, overall, it has come out OK.

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de Havilland Vixen FGA.4 - No.54 Squadron, RAF Strike Command, 1972





This is the Vixen FGA.4 by 'sundowner' who likes a 'what if' with a British flavour and for this I've gone for No.54 Squadron and in 1970's tactical insignia (I loved that era).

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Dassault Mirage F1EA - Marineflieger 2, 1980








I do like the Mirage F1 and almost the entire family are available over at Combat Ace and are right at the sharp end in terms of detail and accuracy especially as they are constantly revised and refined. Anyway, this is the Kuwaiti F1CK-2 with a slightly tinted skin to make it look a bit more Marineflieger-ish, MFG2 markings and Kormoran missiles.

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Curtiss P-40B - 1st Aviation Regiment, Estonian Air Force, 1940

In July 1938 a group of Estonian Air Force officers arrived at the Supermarine works for a technical presentation on the Spitfire Type 300 and, on a later visit, to watch a series of demonstration flights of the Spitfire flown by Supermarine's chief test pilot Mutt Summers. The Estonians left suitably impressed and made an advance payment for 12 Spitfires to Order No. C.186/39. This order was approved by the Air Ministry and a contract between the two governments was finalised on March 2nd, 1939. However, by then the Estonian order had already been made as a third priority on the Foreign Office's list and with war clouds looming Estonia looked elsewhere for a modern fighter aircraft but whilst also keeping the Spitfire order intact.

Wasting no time, in April 1939 Estonian Air Force officers made the long journey to the Curtiss-Wright Corporation's main production facilities in Buffalo, New York to look at the Hawk 81A-2 (essentially the P-40B) that had been flying since October 1938 and had recently been purchased by the United States Army Air Corps whose order for 524 P-40's was the largest single order for a U.S. fighter aircraft at the time. With guarantees on prompt delivery (and ahead of the domestic customer) the Estonian government ordered 16 aircraft in May 1939. The first eight P-40B's arrived in Estonia during the early Spring of 1940 and equipped the 1st Aviation Regiment based at Otepää in southern Estonia but could do little to defend the country at the outset of the Soviet invasion on June 16th, 1940 and all Estonian forces were ordered to stand-down on the following day. The remaining eight P-40B's for Estonia were still in the U.S. and were eventually delivered to the Nationalist Chinese Air Force for use by the American Volunteer Group.






I've been enjoying the 'Estonian Type 332 Spitfire' thread in the Current and Finished Projects section with comrade harps' colourful Spitfire and backstory and also Dizzy's earlier Spitfire model. The latter has inspired me to do this P-40B in Estonian markings and I've used a BoB style skin and applied Estonian markings directly to the skin bitmap, recoloured the spinner and added some white numbers on the rear fuselage. Since doing this earlier today I've been given a lovely 'blank' (without national insignia) BoB Spitfire IA skin to play with and will put this into Estonian service asap.

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Supermarine Spitfire Mk.Ia - 1st Aviation Regiment, Estonian Air Force, 1940








Forget my Estonian P-40 backstory,,, this is the new truth!

As I mentioned, I have been given a 'blank' BoB Spitfire skin i.e. devoid of national insignia to which I've applied Estonian markings with a little cheat on the rudder which should be in thirds but I chose to make the black section a bit taller than an exact one-third so as to cover the rudder trim tab. White numbers (bolder but less Cyrillic than on my P-40) and a blue spinner complete the look and I also added a generic but very patriotic marking found on the web to the nose. BTW ignore the 'enemy' Yak-3 as it's a stray Parani aircraft a long way from the Middle East.

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Supermarine Spitfire Mk.Ia - 5 Eskadrilia, Lithuanian Air Force, 1940






by

Page 74 of the 'Spitfire 'Bible' outlines the countries who were interested in purchasing the Spitfire and the Air Ministry priority list for those potential export customers. Whilst not on the priority list Lithuania's interest in obtaining 14 Spitfires is mentioned and I thought it would be rude not to! So, after trying and failing to paint the national insignia directly onto the skin bitmap (I failed on the ailerons which are awkwardly angled) I resorted to making decals with just a minor drawback in that the outermost doped red patch on each wing is lost under my large green wind bands. The yellow spinner and red diamond are taken of the old Lithuanian flag. Overall, I think I prefer this one to the Estonian one!

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I love making these!

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Baltic Spitfires - Miscellany







I've enjoyed doing these Baltic Spitfires and will revisit this topic again in the future. The Hurricane, P-36 and possibly the P-39 (or Airabonita) are candidates and also the P-40 for Latvia and Lithuania.

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Grumman Mohawk GR.3 - No.26 Squadron, RAF Germany, 1976







Having never built a model of the OV-1 Mohawk I hadn't realised what a quirky looking thing it was. This is the OV-1D, hosted at the DAT site, and whilst it's an elderly 3D model the skins are excellent and for this one I just had to tint a US Army one to the best approximation of RAF Dark Green as I could and add No.26 Squadron markings which I thought were appropriate due to their 'Army Co-operation' background.

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Grumman Mohawk GR.3 - No.28 Squadron, RAF Middle East Command, 1991







I've enjoyed having a play with this odd-looking aircraft. For this 'Operation Granby' bird I had hoped to make a desert pink skin by tinting one of the existing skins (actually the green US Army one). Now, each skin has two textures and whilst I managed to tint one of them by playing around with the hue, chroma and lightness I just couldn't get the other one to match it and I think it's all to do with what other colours are on the texture but it might just be me stumbling around in the dark! I chose No.28 Squadron because of it's army co-operation roots but I thought I'd keep it discreet and there's no squadron markings or nose art... they came later!

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Supermarine Blaze Mk.I - No.19 Squadron, RAF Fighter Command, 1936








I was playing around with the A5M 'Claude' recently (putting it into service with the Parani Army Air Force) and thought it might make a good pre-war RAF interceptor fighter and a contemporary of the Gloster Gladiator. For some reason, I thought it would be a Bristol product and had already named it as the Bristol Blaze having clean forgotten it's lovely elliptical wing shape! Even with a radial engine it looks better than Supermarine's Type 224 (to F7/30) so a quick re-naming was in order. I was tempted to put checkers on the cowling but, from experience, I know that the perspective problem (basically a 2D texture wrapping around a highly curved 3D object) would tie me up in knots so I kept it simple. There's loads of potential in the 'Claude' and a 1938 Munich Crisis machine is an obvious one but I can also see it as a US pursuit fighter, an early Luftwaffe fighter being tested over Spain, an Italian fighter and perhaps in service with some or all of the Baltic and Nordic states...