Friday, 13 September 2019

1/144 Aircraft Part 2: Inter & early war aircraft

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Over the course of the summer, I have purchased a few 1/144 scale model aircraft with an eye for adding air attacks to our tank battles and I have been painting them - more or less all at the same time. Granted, there is limited scope for aerial combat on a table top that covers an area no greater than 80,000m2, but ground attack can still be played and the possibility of dog-fighting off-table is now covered in our Bayonet_10 rule system. There is also the possibility of playing large scale air combat, or naval games with air attack options, outside... Perhaps next summer? Most of these models are finished and ready to play, though one or two details still need to be added.

Neu Prussien.
For the Ordenstaat, I purchased two Heinkel He-51 fighter bombers and two Henschel Hs-123 dive bombers.

All four of these models were bought from Shapeways, and as such, were rather expensive. There are links to the various designers pages in my previous post on 1/144 scale aircraft.


Die Falkenlegion.
Originally, I wasn't going to buy any aircraft for this group since they weren't really a necessary element to our games but I inadvertently bought the wrong Stuka when I was buying for Magne's Germans, and so I was obliged to paint this Ju-87A in a way that might incorporate it into a game or two. Since I have no plans on playing any SCW games any time soon, it was an obvious choice to paint it in as a Kondorlegion aicraft, but with Neu-Prussian roundels. 

This model was also bought from Shapeways



Venezuelan National Army Air Force
Originally I was looking to buy aircraft to support my USMC expeditionary force for the Venezuela '39 campaign, and (probably inspired by the old King Kong movie) I went for a pair Boeing P-16/F4Bs only to then find out that this aircraft had been retired from US service by 1939.

I still have an idea to buy at least two more aircraft for my Venezuela '39 campaign, but I now doubt that I will buy US aircraft since there is a limit to how many models I can justify buying for a few tank battles... 

Both models were bought from Shapeways




Milicia Rojo and Soviet Expeditionary Air Force
There are a lot of cool aircraft to choose between for the Communist forces, but the actual model options were limited. I would have loved to have bought some twin engined Tupolev SB or Ilyushin Il-4s, but I was obliged to keep to the smaller scale of our games and so I bought two Polikarpov R-5 bombers (which could be adapted to carry torpedoes) and two Polikarpov I-16 'Rata' fighters.

All four models came from Shapeways. I was surprised when I saw just how tiny the I-16's were. I knew it was a small fighter, but I was astounded at just how small!

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For part 1, see here. For part 3, see here. 

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