Tuesday 3 February 2015

WWII Early War Aircraft: The Fairey Battle

This has been a long term France 1940 dream project, the infamous RAF Fairey Battle (AASF - Advanced Air Strike Force), possibly the "worst" [British] bomber of WWII and we had a few to chose from. I never got the kit as a child but when I saw the error of my ways and wanted one they were not around in the 1990's to 2005+. So I snapped one up when it was finally re-released recently (a few years back?). Now it is finally Fairey Battle construction time (see below for the dissected construction WIP):


The parts are assembled into sub-assemblies ready for priming and then inside out paint with Cockpit Green and the RAF Flyers getting their blue uniform and yellow harness treatment. Originally I was thinking of getting three kits and doing an air scenario for the attack on the Sedan Bridgehead, a kind of early war 1940 style 633 Squadron attack (with everybody going down in a hail of light flak), but even light bombers are "big" to store in 1/72 scale. It may be more feasible to do this in Zevezda's 1/144 or metal 1/300, with my German 1/200 Blitzkrieg kit being the land elements/targets.

The latter thoughts must be considered to be in the "future project" category.

6 comments:

Al said...

Nice, one of my all time favs!

Paul Foster said...

Nice one Geordie. I have two of these I have been putting off building. You may have given me a push.

Geordie an Exiled FoG said...

Nice to know I share your tastes in WWII early war aircraft

Personally I think you deserved a VC for getting into one of these things

Service Ration Distribution (Hobby) said...

Great one to build. Three 1/72nd scale in an attack would be spectacular. Looking forward to it already!

DeanM said...

Happy to hear you finding this model again. The recent re-releases of model kits from our childhood past is a blessing!

Geordie an Exiled FoG said...

Just saw the price of the Zvezda 1/144 kits (£7.99) which would mean (if the kits were still in production, as is always the case for Airfix) the 1/72 version of an attack on The Sedan Bridges would be as cheap/expensive as the smaller scale 1/144 :(

Maybe 1/300 is the scale to invest in after all ;)