Hurricane Mk. I of Pilot Officer Jimmy Dunn

The Hawker Hurricane is one of my favorite WW2 Aircraft. The Spitfire may be more graceful, the FW190 more brutal looking and the P-51 more elegant, but the Hurricane radiates all the characteristics of a true work- and warhorse.

The kit is the Airfix early fabric-wing Hurricane, and as most, if not all, modern Airfix kits, it is easy and fun to assemble. The detailing is quite good, but the plastic is quite soft. Thus, be careful when cutting and sanding. I used decals from several sources: LF Models 'Hawker Hurricane Mk. I. Battle of Belgium" for the roundels markings and Aviaeology's 'Vital Storm pt. 1' for stencils. Seat belts were added from masking tape, and some figures were added from the old Airfix RAF ground crew set. Dunn's Hurricane had the second type of exhausts, and not the original 'kidney' exhaust. It was also equipped with the two-blade Watts wooden propeller. The picture may indicate that Dunn's Hurricane had the early type of radio mast, and not the late type with a short and a long aerial shown on the LF Models instruction sheet.

So, what about the pilot, Pilot Officer Horatio James 'Jimmy' Rennie Dunn? He was awarded his pilot's certificate on December 17, 1938, after successfully passing through the RAF College at Cranwell. He was married to Denise Dunn, neé Foster. Dunn's war was fairly short, and he may have been a bit of an accident-prone pilot. Pilot Officer Dunn flew for No. 87 Squadron, and he was initially based in Lille/Seclin air base in France. On November 10, 1939, Dunn ran out of fuel after having engaged a reconnaissance Dornier over Tourcoing, and being lost, he was forced to land in the Mouscron area in West Flanders, i. e. in neutral Belgium. The Hurricane, L1619, was slightly damaged. Dunn was interned by the Belgian authorities near Antwerp, but he escaped on November 24, 1939, subsequently returning to his base.

Pilot Officer Dunn flew various Hurricanes during the Battle of France, and he claimed one Bf 109 on May 19, 1940. After being evacuated back to Great Britain, Dunn was flying a training flight in a Hurricane nn June 1, 1940. Unfortunately, Dunn failed to recvover from a stalled turn, and he was killed when the aircraft crashed near Yeadon at 12.30. Dunn was only 23 years old.

Source: http://www.henhamhistory.org/DunnWMem.html

Source: www.belgian-wings.be

Douglas TBD Devastator

The Douglas TBD Devastator was a very modern aircraft when it was introduced in the late 1930s. being the first metal monoplane torpedo bomber of the USN. The rapid pace of aircraft development during that era also meant that the Devastator was all but obsolete when the United States entered the war.

The Airfix TBD was for many years the only kit available in 1/72. I'd say that the molds date back to the late 1960s or early seventies. The kit is accurate, but suffers from the typical molding techniques of that era, in this case raised panel lines and overdone riveting. However, the TBD was built before the era of flush riveting, so we'll let that slip. The fit is decent, although the interior isn't very detailed. On the other hand, the thick canopy doesn't really show the cockpit. An additional review can be found here.

Two after-market items were added: White Ensigh photo-etch and decals from Techmod. The phot-etch set consisted of the wing folding mechanisms, the pitot head, an air filter, propellers for the Mk 13 torpedo, the wheel wells, and the hatches for the bomb sight. The decals were unfortunately very delicate and did not react to setting solution, even on the non-corrugated part of the model. Nevertheless, this TBD is marked as the aircraft flown by VT-2 commander Lt Cdr J. Brett together with AOM2c D. F. Hallock as observer and ARM1c A. D. Hensley as gunner off the carrier USS Lexington. Brett led the attack against the IJN light carrier Shoho at the Battle of the Coral Sea on May 7, 1942. Five out of nine of the notoriously unreliable torpedoes actually hit the target. VT-2 lost two aircraft during the attack, but the entire complemet of Devastators went down with the Lexington when she was sunk after the battle.

Nieuport-Macchi Ni.10

The Nieuport 10 is one of the less well known of the long line of Nieuport scouts. It was the first Aircraft designed by Gustave Delage, and it first flew in 1915. The Ni.10 was powered by a 80hp Gnome of Le Rhone Engine. It was built both as a single and a double seater, and many single seaters were simply converted from double seater Nieuports. The double seater came in two versions: the 10 AV with the observer in front, and the 10 AR with the observer behind. Ni.10 was initially not armed, but Capitaine Brocard, the future commander of Les Cicognes, managed to shoot down an enemy aircraft with a pistol on July 3, 1915 while flying a Ni.10.

The Ni.10 was used by, amongst others,  the air forces of France, Great Britain, Belgium, Russia, Italy and eventually Finland. The Ni.10 single seater was flown by several budding aces such as Georges Guynemer, Francesco Baracca and Jan Olieslagers before the introduction of the Nieuport 11 and subsequent successful Nieuport scouts.

The Italian version was known as the Nieuport-Macchi. with the company being formed to build the Nieuport IV.G under license. The Nieuport-Macchi Ni.10 underwent a number of significant improvements, and the two-seater Ni-10 served as a trainer until the end of the 1920s. Twenty-six Ni.10s were imported from France, and another 240 were built in Italy.

The Nieuport-Macchis were originally used for defensive purposes of the Town of Undine, but later on additional defensive tasks as well as reconnaissance missions were performed by the Ni.10. The Italians also appreciated the ability of the Nieuports to gain altitude at a decent rate, and both Ni.10s and other Nieuports were used to escort Caproni bombers on missions against Austro-Hungarian targets such as Fiume, Dornberg, Opicina, Gorizia and Trieste from 1916 and onwards. 

The model is a resin kit by the Czech Company HR Model. The Company offers both plastic and resin kits as well as decals and conversion kts. The Nieuport 10 is nowadays aoffered as an injection moulded plastic kit, but I bought this resin kit at Hobbybokhandeln in Stockholm, one of my favourite stores with a good selection of both older model kits and books. This is also the first resin kit I completed, and I did learn one or two lessons from it. The cockpit was lacking detail, but I added air crew instead of detailing the cockpit. I also added rudder horns, a windscreen, an injection moulded Lewis gun from a Nieuport 23, seatbelts, cabane struts that were excluded, rubber bars, a joystick, rigging, and Italian markings to make a Nieuport based on a surviving example in Italy instead of the Belgian and Finnish markings in the kit. The aircrew came from an Airfix Roland Wal and a Sopwith Pup. Certain things did nort work out: the dihedral is not sufficient, despite working over the resin with a hairdryer for some time. There are also some issues with the struts, and one was missing from the kits, so a new one had to be scratch built in plastic. There is not an abundance of details regarding the markings of two- seated Nieuport 10s, so the painting and markings are the result of some guesswork from available sources.