Book Review: Luftwaffe Training Aircraft, Chris Goss

Covering a neglected and potentially interesting subject, if perhaps more up the avenue of a plane modeller, this is a good source of pictures. But the text is very minimal, consisting of a brief intro, a useful glossary, and then the picture captions. 

The intro gives some background context, and the glossary is very useful. But the captions are, by and large, a bit too dry, often consisting solely of info on the plane's werk nummer and service history. Where there's some info beyond that, say for example on the fates of the crew, or some other interesting little detail, it's better.

Focke Wulf FW 44 'Stieglitz'.

Under the Air War Archive banner this one's kind of in the vein of the Images of War series, inasmuch as it's primarily a pictorial resource. Given the author's acknowledgment of this as an understudied area of aerial warfare, it's a shame there isn't more in the way of interesting textual detail. Bit of a missed opportunity there.

Some of the planes covered herein are familiar, but many aren't. At least not to me. But then I'm more of an ground warfare freak than a air war type guy. Some of the images have sparked an interest  that might lead me to build something different. But then again, perhaps I should concentrate on all the stuff I already have in hand?

Heinkel He 50.

Of all the books I've been reading and reviewing recently, this one's certainly not amongst my favourite. I have been getting more into aircraft of late. But even so, this is perhaps a little too specialised and a little too dry for me. Still, it's always nice to have more pics in the library!

Kit build/review: Airfix 1/72 Me109

My wife and I went on a later than normal summer break a short while back, the delay being occasioned by our getting a new home that's in need of substantial work. Whilst the short break was welcome respite from toil, both domestic and professional, I discovered I was in no mood to take any further time out from my military interests. 

My small port glass looks positively Floydian (Keith, not Pink), next to the pilot and prop!

So, I took James Holland's superb War In The West (pt. 1), and began chomping through that voraciously. I even successfully persuaded Teresa to watch Robert Shaw as Custer of the West (a film I saw and loved as a kid!). And, coming to the point of this post, somewhat to my own surprise, I even bought a model - with a view to building it whilst we were away as well - in a shop near where we were staying!

The pilot figure is rather nice, to my eyes.

The model in question is the 1/72 Airfix Me109 (E-7/Trop variant). This and another older Airfix Me109 kit were the only German WWII kits the shop had. I was forced to buy a knife, glue, and some paints and brushes as well. [1] 

The kit is - and this is especially noticeable after recently working on the old Airfix 1/76 'Katy' ambulance - wonderfully crisply moulded, requiring minimal tidying. And the fit of parts is also, by and large, excellent. 

I bought two Vallejo acrylics and a can of car undercoat. The latter was both more expensive than usual, and seemed coarser, leaving a textured 'bubbly' coat.

Decals were applied at the wrong point! The darker flying helmet was painted using a home-made black!! [2]

I made my task tougher by having such a minimal toolkit, some of which - the £1.49 knife, for example - was plain awful. I also did a few dumb things, construction-wise, such as gluing the pilot and cockpit to one half of the fuselage before adding the control panel decals! My attempts at fabricating home-made paint weren't too successful either!

We popped in to the 'office', mid-vacation, enabling me to get some more painted detail onto the pilot/cockpit. My goal is to finish this plane and the 'Katy' ambulance before I resume work at the coalface. In the meantime, this post shows how far I got during late-summer-vacation, pt. I.

How the pilot/cockpit look at the time of posting.

UPDATE:

Did a bit more this evening. Only the canopy and aerial left now, and then painting/decals, of course. Some of the detail under the wings (little aerial like things) is very fine/fragile. Indeed, I broke several parts separating them from the sprues. 

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NOTES:

[1] This impulse purchase has convinced me that I need to sort out a portable modelling toolkit!

[2]  Made with some of Teresa's mascara! Bic biro ink didn't work.