Sweden was the first foreign country to buy the de Havilland Vampire, the second jet powered aircraft in the Royal Air Force, when they ordered some 70 planes in 1946. Eventually some 437 Vampires saw service in the Swedish Air Force under the code J28.
Here is two versions of Trumpeters kit in 1/48.
The first (in bare metal) is the individual 28181 as it looked like while they tested day glow markings at F8 (an air base) in 1959-1960. By then the plane had been in service since 1950. The plane was written off in an accident on the 13th September 1966 when the pilot made a miss-judgement during take off and landing practice. The pilot survived.
The second (in green/blue) is the individual 28265 who saw service between 1951-1957. It was scrapped after service. This was the most common colour scheme for the Vampires in Swedish service.
As young (eighteen years) and relatively inexperienced pilot with only 50 hours of flying Mathias Rust sets of on an adventure on 13 May 1987. In a rented Reims Cessna F172P with registration D-ECJB he sets of from Uetersen in West Germany. For two weeks he travels over the North Sea visiting the Faroe Islands, Reykjavik on Icland, Bergen in Norway and then Helsinki in Finland. In the morning of 28 May he fills the tanks claiming he's off to Stockholm, Sweden. Instead he turns east turning off all communication equipment aborad. Entering Soviet territory over Estonia he turns towards Moscow.
Several lucky chances made it possible for Mathias to avoid the Soviet Air Defences all the way to Moscow. After making a few fly by's over the Red Square trying to land he finally landed on the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge and taxied within 100 meters from the Red Square. Astonished by standers approached him and was doubly surprised when they realized that he came from West Germany. They managed to get some autographs before the police came and arrested him. The fly by's and landing was video taped by a British doctor who happened to be visiting Moscow.
Mathias was put in prison but released a year later as a good will gesture. The whole affair enabled Gorbachev to remove many of the strongest opponents to his reformes,
This kit is from Italeri in scale 1:48.
These two aircraft was in the air during the famous attack on Pearl Harbour on the 7th of December 1941.
The Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero was flown by Lieutenant Commander Shigeru Itaya who led the first wave from the aircraft carrier Akagi. They lost one plane during the raid. One source says that he later reached ace status over China. He lost his life over the Kuriles on 24th of July 1944. He was mistakenly shot down by Japanese anti-aircraft gunners who thought it was an enemy plane.
The Curtiss P-40 Warhawk was flown by Lieutenant George Welch. After an all night poker game, when the Japanese attacked, he and his friend Ken Taylor rushed of to the auxiliary Haleiwa Fighter Strip and took off with their Warhawks only armed with 30 cal. ammo. Welch shot down one and damaged another Aichi D3A Val dive bombers. They returned to reload, this time also with ammo for their 50 cal. guns. During the second flight Welch managed to shoot down a second Val and a Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero. For this he received a DSC. This is depicted in the 2001 movie Pearl Harbour. However unlike the hero in the picture Welch did not continue to participate in the Doolittle raid (an unlikely chain of events anyways). Instead he flew P-39 Airacobra and P-38H Lightning over New Guinea tallying his score up to a total of 16 shot down.
After the war he continued as a test pilot for North American Aviation. During the Korean War he reportedly downed several enemy MiG-15 "Fagots" while "supervising" his students. However, Welch's kills were in disobedience of direct orders for him to not engage, and credits for the kills were thus distributed among his students. He was killed in 1954 when the Super Sabre he tested disintegrated during testing.
The Mitsubishi A6M Zero was developed starting 1937 and it was ready for production in 1939. It was the first aircraft carrier based fighter that could match it's land based equivalents. It staid the main fighter in the Japanese air force all through WWII. Eight different variants was constructed during the war but the last, the A6M8, was never put in production as the war ended. It was built to be fast and light but it's poor armament made it vulnerable to the heavier gunned opponents at later stages in the war.
The Curtiss P-40 Warhawk first flew in 1938 and was the main fighter in the US Air Force at the start of WWII. It was mainly used in North Africa, by the Brittish under the name Tomahawk, in South West Pacific and in China, in the Chinese Air Force flown by Americans. It saw front line service to the end of the war although it was out preformed by the P-47 Thunderbolt and the P-51 Mustang.
The Mitsubishi A6M2 is a kit from Tamiya in scale 1/48. The kit is a bit dated but OK.
The Curtiss P-40B Warhawk is the quite new kit from Airfix in scale 1/48. I've written a review of the P-40B Warhawk kit here.
On the 10th of May 1941 Rudolf Hess, deputy Fürer of the German Reich, climbed up in his Messerschmitt Bf 110 and took off. His aim was to contact Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, the Duke of Hamilton who he erroneously thought lead a party opposing the war. He flew a long round over the North Sea to avoid British radar. Towards the evening he reached north east England and started to zigzagg to find his way. The British sent out several aircraft to find him and Hess continued at high speed and low altitude into Scotland. After flying around to find Dungavel House which was his goal, running out of fuel, he bailed out out close to Eaglesham south of Glasgow. He was attempting to single handedly negotiating a separate peace with Britain before Germany's attack on Russia. Instead he was resolutely put in jail and remained there the rest of the war. Afterwards he was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Nürnberg trials.
The plane crashed at 23:09, about 12 miles (19 km) west of Dungavel House. Some of the fuselage is still displayed at the Imperial War Museum in London.
The Messerschmitt Bf110 first flew in 1936. Developed as a heavy fighter and fighter-bomber it saw service in most theatres where the Germans fought through out WWII. Possibly it was most successful as a night fighter defending the Reich. The top night fighter ace of all time, Major Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer, flew it exclusively and claimed 121 victories in 164 combat missions.
This is a model in scale 1/48 (Eduard) of the aircraft that Rudolf Hess flew on that fateful night. Read a review of the kit here.
This Sturmovik participated in the liberation of Leningrad in January 1944. Leningrad was surrounded by the Germans in September 1941 and put under sever siege. The Germans however did not manage to take the city and it stayed under siege as fighting concentrated on Stalingrad and other parts of the front. The city was supplied during the first winter over the frozen Laduga lake under sever losses. In January 1943 the Soviet managed to open an narrow corridor to the city but it was not until January 27 1944 that the siege was really broken. The city had then been besieged for 872 days one of the longest sieges in history.
The aircraft is an Ilyushin IL-2 Sturmovik known as the Soviet flying tank. With 36,183 units of the IL-2 produced during the war, and in combination with its successor, the Ilyushin Il-10, a total of 42,330 were built, making it the single most produced military aircraft design in aviation history. Stalin said about them: "They are as essential to the Red Army as air and bread". At first they were single seaters but the pilots found them to vulnerable and a few were retro fitted with a rear gunner. This modification later became standard on later models.
On June 13 1952 an unarmed Dc3 from the Swedish Air Force was shot down and vanished over the Baltic Sea. The plane was on a radio surveillance mission to pick up intel from the Soviet Union. It was equipped with the latest technique supplied from the US. It had a crew of eight, three were military personnel from the Swedish Air Force and the other five were civilian signals intelligence (SIGINT) operators from the National Defence Radio Establishment.
Three days later an unarmed Swedish PBY-5A Catalina that participated in the search for missing Dc3 was also shot down over international waters. This time the crew survived and was picked up by a West German fishing boat.
Both planes were shot down by Mig-15's from the Soviet Union.
This events became a hot political issue. Specially due to the very secretive mission of the Dc3. Sweden quickly turned their focus on the rescue plane that was obviously shot down by the Soviets. Thus it was to become known as the Catalina affair (Catalinaaffären in Swedish).
The Dc-3 remained vanished. There was a lot of theories about it being forced to land in the Soviet Union and the crew being interned. Finally on the 10th of June 2003, 51 years later, the wreck of the Dc3 was found at the bottom of the Baltic sea on international waters together with remains from some of the crew.
The models are in scale 1/48:
- Revell's C-47 Skytrain (Dc-3) (Converted)
- Revell's Consolidated PBY-5A Catalina (Converted)
- Tamiya's Mig 15 bis
