Fokker D.VII (OAW) 1/32: Part 2

Continuing on with the Wingnut Wings Fok D.VII (OAW). Minor progress this week...just put the engine in.

I also have one other photo of the plane's pilot, Fritz Schliewen. Here is a group photo of Jasta 6 pilots in the late summer of 1918. Schliewen, who would have been 20 or 21 years old at the time, is identified as the pilot 4th from the right.

This is a 21-piece model of the Daimler-Mercedes 180hp D.IIIa engine. The fit and engineering is excellent.

And the current state of the interior assembly...comin' along. Fuselage halves are next!

'Til next time.

Fokker D.VII (OAW) 1/32: Part 1

Well, I've decided to undertake a display model project. I really haven't done something like this for decades...building a model just to have it and put it on display. No gaming application whatsoever. It feels weird.

A few weeks back, I was digging around in a pile of WWI magazines, and was drawn (once again) to the myriad articles featuring Wingnut Wings models. This is Peter Jackson's model kit outfit in New Zealand. All their WWI planes are in 1/32nd scale...enormous by my gaming standards. But no one can deny the beauty and engineering perfection of these kits.

I decided to acquire one and build it. But which one? There are already numerous kits available, ranging from the early war DH2s to Gotha bombers. If I was to only do one of these kits it would have to be: a) a popular subject, b) rigging light and c) relatively uncomplicated in general structure. Hmmm, sounds like a Fokker D.VII.

It arrived in the mail and I dug right in. Wow...big kit. And beautiful.

When I was placing my order, I wanted to do a largely lozenge fabric example. So many Fokker D.VIIs had elaborate paint schemes and these have been the subject of many modelling efforts. However, most D.VIIs were simply covered in lozenge fabric and then just painted with jasta-identifying tail and/or nose markings.

Wingnut Wings supplies numerous decal options for their kits. The closest I could come to my desired end product was an OAW Fokker (built by the eastern Albatross factory under license) flown by Fritz Schliewen, Jasta 6 in the fall of 1918.

That's his plane at the bottom of the decal sheet lineup.

A very pretty plane. 4-color lozenge overall. Jasta 6 tail, wheel and nose stripes, and then a simple but distinctive personal marking...the Bavarian diamond band around the middle of the fuselage. 

Here's Robert Karr's painting of Schliewen's D.VII.

There are only a couple of known photos of Fritz Schliewen. Here he is sitting on the back of his D.VII. This was likely taken in late August, 1918.

Researching WWI pilots is difficult at the best of times. So many records have been lost or destroyed over the past century. Schliewen turned out to be very tough to get background information on, particularly since his last name had two spellings. He was also known as Fritz Schiemann.

Here's his history, as best as I can reconstruct it. He was born in 1897. He entered the German air force at age 17, in 1914, and became a two-seater pilot. He flew artillery spotting aircraft for most of the war. However, at the beginning of August, 1918, he entered Jastaschule I (fighter school). He graduated in mid-August and was immediately posted to Jasta 6 (part of Jadgeswchwader I, Richthofen's famous flying circus). There, he earned two air combat victories.

His first was at 3:25 PM on Thursday, September 5th, shooting down a British observation balloon while on a mission with fellow Jasta 6 pilot, Richard Wenzl. The balloon's observer, Sgt Woolgar, jumped to safety. See the painting above for an image of that afternoon's action.

His second and final victory came on October 29th at 4:25 in the afternoon, when he downed a SPAD XIII (likely French). Little is known of this particular action.

Schliewen survived the war. Although details cannot be confirmed, it seems he died in 1945, at age 48, while fleeing with his family from the Russian advance through Eastern Europe near the end of WWII. That was certainly a dangerous time, and a bitter end.

On to the build.

This week, I started into the cockpit. The Wingnut Wings instruction book is wonderfully put together, and very detailed. The parts are small (and there are many of them), but construction is clear and straightforward.

Here we are at the end of week 1...

Love all the details in this kit. Too bad a lot of it will be covered up when the fuselage goes together!

One final view of the assembly.

Taking on this project will certainly eat into my game model productivity for the year...but it's nice to change things up for once. Looking forward to getting deeper into this project.

'Til next time.

Star Spangled SPAD

Last weekend I wrote up my 2011 review. As I was posting that blog entry, I realized that I hadn't done a single WWI model last year. What?!?

Time to right that injustice. Fortunately, I had a project I really wanted to do. A few months back, I'd ordered away for some after-market decals for 94th Aero Squadron post-WWI showbird paint schemes. Captain Reed Chambers' "Stars and Stripes" scheme I found particularly eye-catching. These decals came from Mark's Models and Toys and were designed for the Eduard 1/72 late-model SPAD XIII.

There are a couple of photos of the original plane, from March 1919. Reed Chambers met with a fair bit of success during the war. He was credited with 6 enemy planes downed, as well as one balloon.

Each SPAD in the squadron was painted in its own unique and spectacular scheme. Marvelous!

As you can imagine, this project was an exercise in decal application. I sprayed the wings with Reaper Linen White (bright white, as a paint, did not come available until long after WWI). I started with the wing decals while closing up the fuselage and filling with GW's liquid green stuff.

There were chunks of the fuselage that needed to be painted in the same shade of blue that appears on the wing decals. I was able to get a pretty close match by mixing Vallejo French Blue with Pale Blue Grey. I masked and sprayed for the nose and tail plane.

Fuselage stripes and lots and lots of little star decals.

Presto!

Rigging was heated, stretched plastic sprue, painted metal.

Pilot figure was a resin piece I had in the parts box.

Even though this scheme was painted 5 months after the war, I'll have no reservation fielding this in our next Canvas Eagles game.

'Til next time.

Albatros D.V Builds: Part 2

The title of this week's build blog should be "All Rib Tapes, All The Time."

Most of my hobby time this week was spent working on the wings of Sigmann's D.V. I've stalled out on several WWI biplane projects in the past simply because I couldn't stand the tedium of applying rib tapes. However, I'm determined to get through this eight-plane build...two of which require rib taping...so I'm sucking it up and plowing through them.

I also got the fuselage markings onto the two Jasta 12 D.Vs.

So, the end of this week doesn't look very much different than the end of last week. This week coming up I'm down in Austin, so progress on these builds will be put on hold for about five days. No problem...I'm feeling pretty confident that I should be mostly done this project by the end of January.

'Til next time.

Albatros D.V Builds: Part 1

Hello 2010!

Well, a new bout of Canvas Eagles nuttiness is sweeping my hobby table into the New Year. Over the holidays, I started a pretty ambitious project: Eight 1/72 scale Albatros D.V fighters. I look at it this way...I just finished six Fokker Dr.Is; that's 18 wings of work. Eight Albatros fighters are only 16 wings of work...easy peasy...right?

Here the fuselage halves are awaiting glue, and the wings are base painted.


Fuselages are closed, puttied, sanded and base coated. For the eight builds, four have plywood fuselages, two are light grey, one is white and one is green.


Here, fuselage sections are matched with wings and tails...OK, now which eight builds am I doing anyway?


Time to work on a big-time unit. I chose to do a number of aircraft from Jasta 5, Germany's 3rd highest ranking wartime fighter unit. Jasta 5 accumulated 253 aerial victories and only lost 21 pilots in combat, killed and captured. Their Albatros fighters, from the summer of 1917 through to the spring of 1918, were some of the most fancifully decorated aircraft flying over the Western Front. Five of the eight builds will be from Jasta 5.


Build #1

The commanding officer of Jasta 5 through most of the Albatros period was Oberleutnant Richard Flashar. His dragon-marked D.V is well known and well documented. He flew this plane through the last half of 1917 and into 1918.


Unlike most German fighter units in the First World War, the commanding officer of Jasta 5 was not their most prolific scorer. In fact, Flashar ended with war with only 2 victories. However, his fame comes from the fact that he scored Germany's first aerial combat victory of the war, back in 1914. He downed a French aircraft with a shotgun.


Build #2

On the other hand, Leutnant Fritz Rumey was Jasta 5's most prolific aerial fighter, scoring all 45 of his wartime victories with the squadron. He flew several different Albatros fighters...this one was known to be active in the Spring of 1918.


Rumey was wounded twice in 1918, and was eventually shot down on September 27th. He bailed out of his Fokker D.VII, but his parachute failed to deploy. He fell to his death.


Build #3

Paul Baumer was a very successful fighter pilot with three of his 43 victories scored with Jasta 5 in July, 1917. He was then transfered to Jasta 2, where he remained for the rest of the war. There has been much debate over the colors used on Baumer's fuselage. This rendering shows the edelweiss flower painted over a background of darker red. Some think the darker band might have been black. I chose black for this build.


Baumer became a dentist after the war, but he also worked as a stunt pilot and eventually he had his own aircraft manufacturing company based in Hamburg. During an aerobatic display in Copenhagen in 1927, Baumer crashed his plane and was killed.


Doesn't he look like Tony Curtis?


Build #4

Otto Konnecke scored 33 of his 35 victories with Jasta 5, from May '17 through to the end of the war. He flew several green Albatros fighters during his time with the squadron.


Here Konnecke (second from left) poses with his ground crew in front of one of his green Albatros D.Vs.


Otto Konnecke survived the war. He became a pilot with Lufthansa in 1926 and was a commander of flying schools during the Second World War. He lived in Germany after the war and eventually passed away in 1956.


Build #5

Ah, an unidentified Jasta 5 plane with an unknown pilot. However, I couldn't resist doing this very simple paint scheme...particularly since I had a red fuselage band decal from another kit I could use! This aircraft was recorded as being active in the squadron over the winter of '17/'18.


Build #6

OK, time to leave Jasta 5 and move on to two builds from Jasta 12...again, these would be aircraft flown in late 1917 and early 1918.

The first is flown by Leutnant Ulrich Neckel. He scored 20 of his 30 victories with Jasta 12.


Ulrich Neckel eventually went on to command Jasta 6 and received the second-last "Blue Max" medal to be awarded...just three days before the end of the war. Ten years later, in 1928, he died from tuberculosis in Italy.


Build #7

This is another documented Jasta 12 Albatros. Unfortunately, we don't know the name of the pilot who few this fighter marked with the stylized Star of David.


Build #8

For the final build, I decided to do this very striking late-war Albatros D.Va from Bavarian Jasta 78. This squadron was small and obscure, producing no pilots of renown. However, one has to admit that the unit markings were very beautiful. This plane was flown by Vizefeldwebel Michael Sigmann.


Sigmann, seen here in flying kit, scored no aerial victories. He was wounded in the arm during combat in August, 1918 but was able to land safely and survive the war.


Well, the holidays are drawing to a close and work on these models will start to slow down now. Here is the current state of the builds. Most of the planes should be recognizable at this point. I still have some more fuselage and wing decaling to do, but most of the heavy lifting is behind me. Up next is final component painting, strut work and then assembly.


'Til next time.

Fokker Triplane Build: Part 1

And now...onto the Jasta 19 Fokker Dr.I build.


As I've been threatening, I'm now starting into a build of five Fokker Triplanes for our Canvas Eagles games. I'm using Eduard 1/72 scale kits with Gunsight Graphics streak painting decals and the Pheon Models transfer sheet for the individual plane markings.


Why Jasta 19? Well, first of all, their markings in late March/early April 1918 were stark, and quite beautiful. They'll be easy to identify and differentiate on the game table.



Second, this was a work-a-day unit. It wasn't stacked full of celebrated pilots who were tearing up the skies of France. In fact, the unit was struggling in early 1918. I guess I'm a sucker for the also-rans! Be that as it may, as the last big German offensive of the war was getting underway (Operation Michael, March 21, 1918), Jasta 19 was one of four squadrons constituting Jagdgeschwader II, another fighter wing patterned after Manfred von Richthofen's very successful Jagdgeschwader I.


I have three of the required five kits on the hobby table...still waiting on the mail for the last two. However, the major components are prepped and I've started into the painting and wing decaling.



This is a flight line shot of Jasta 19 aircraft in April 1918. The first three planes you can see here will be included in this build.



In late March and early April, Jasta 19's leader was Leutnant Walter Gottsch. He was fated to be shot down on April 10th, 1918, just as the Jasta was starting to come into its own. His final victory total was 20 enemy aircraft. He was credited with 3 victories in this build's swastika-marked triplane before he was killed in action.



As I mentioned, Jasta 19 was a somewhat under-performing unit. JG II's new commanding officer, Rudolf Berthold, sent his own man to the squadron in order to give them a kick-start. This pilot was Leutnant Arthur Rahn. Rahn scored twice in his diamond-banded triplane. He was wounded on July 17 and finished the war with a total of 6 victories.



Leutnant Rudolf Rienau spent most of his flying career with Jasta 19. He scored once in his striped-fuselage triplane in early March, and then ran up his tally to 6 (flying a Fokker D.VII) towards the end of the war. He was shot down on September 13th 1918, but was saved by his parachute. He was killed in a flying accident in 1925.



Leutnant Hans Korner scored once in his zig-zag marked Jasta 19 triplane on the last day of March, 1918. He survived the war with a final victory total of 7. He remained in aviation after the war, but was killed in a motorcycle accident on the way to his airfield.



Back to the builds...


So I've tried to simulate Fokker paint streaks on models before. And while I was pretty satisfied with the result, it took f-o-r-e-v-e-r. This time around, I've decided to go with decals for the base paint scheme.



Here are three sets of wings with the decals applied (except for the upper wing ailerons).



Pheon Models supplies a lot of source information for their decal sheet. Here you can see the guidelines for Rahn, Gottsch, Korner and Rienau's machines.



Now, of course, this is a five plane build. So...which is the fifth plane? Well, as you may know, many German records were lost or destroyed at the end of the first and second world wars. As such, our knowledge of all pilots and aircraft is incomplete. Now, what we do know is that there was a Jasta 19 pilot known as Vizefeldwebel Gerdes. He scored a single victory with the squadron on March 16th, 1918. (Sorry, no pilot photo.) We also know the following triplane flew for Jasta 19 at that time, but it's pilot was unknown. Unknown pilot...unknown plane. I dub this Gerdes' triplane! It will be the fifth and final plane of this flight.



Some plan views of this build.



OK, hopefully the last couple of models come in and I can move this build forward.