New Planes

Inspired by last week's game of Spandau & Lewis I painted some more aircraft on Sunday afternoon. They've been sat around for a couple of years, mocking me for my lack of progress, so I thought it best.

As always they're 1/600th models from Tumbling Dice.

First up were some Fokker EIIIs. I already have some of these, but they were scratchbuilds and whilst I'm quite pleased with them, they had a couple of failings. The last time I put in an order to Tumbling Dice I decided that I may as well order some of their models, and replace mine.

(To be fair, when I made mine, Tumbling Dice didn't make them. Since then they've upped their game in terms of early-war planes.)

Continuing the earl-war theme are these Vickers FB5s - the magnificently, if somewhat over-enthusiastically, named 'Gunbus'. This was the first aircraft designed to carry a gun specifically with the aim of shooting down other aircraft. They're not great, but one crew managed ace status in them.

Anyway, the nice thing abut 1/600th scale is that the planes can masquerade as other aircraft and no-one too likely to notice, and the Gunbus is not that different from the Fe2, a mainstay of the RFC two-seaters. Since Tumbling Dice don't do FE2s, the Gunbus makes a great stand-in.

Finally I did these Morane Ls. They'll also do as Morane Ps. I painted two with French markings and two with RFC. 

Everything I can find concerning the Morane L talks about how it was the first plane with a forward-firing machine-gun (thanks to the wonderful Garros wedges). Nothing talks about its role as a two-seater or how it might be armed (if at all) in that role. 

Anyway, I still have to mount the Moranes on their stands, and the other planes need labels. But most of them are ready to fly. I'm not sure they'll all be in use in this week's club game, but who know.

And I have other planes waiting to be painted, including a massive Zeppelin Staaken bomber.