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 Ni.21 flown by Podpolkovnik Yevgraf Nikolaevich Kruten

The Nieuport Ni.21 was only marginally different from the Ni.17 in appearance, often with an added headrest and parallell flying wires. Internally, the entire aircraft was lightened and powered by an 80hp Le Rhone Engine, since the Ni.21 was planned to be a bomber escort. As it turned out, French doctrine changed, and the Ni.21 mainly served in a more traditional scout role.

The Ni.21 was also produced by the Russian Dux factory for use with the Russian Imperial Air Force. It was also flown by Raoul Lufbery in 1916 as well by the RNAS as the Nieuport Type 17B. The United States Air Service operated 198 Ni.21s as trainer aircraft.

This kit is manufactured by the Ukrainian company Bat. The model was generously given to me by Lt. Col. Forterre after working in Latvia in 2017, and it had both pros and cons. On the upside - and this is a big one - the upper wing is molded in translucent plastic, which means that the transparency in the middle of the wing could be faithfully replicated. The proportions are correct, the interior is good, and the decals are superb, but there were some issues with fitting, and I recommend careful dry fitting and patience. Also, as with most kits, there were no seatbelts, so I made a belt out of masking tape. The figures are  from the Orion WW1 pilot set, and for some reason, the facial features of the pilot are quite distorted, making me think he survived some horrible cockpit fire.

Lt. Col Kruten, whose Bogatyr (medieval Knight) adorns this aircraft, flew both a Ni.17 and and a Ni.21 during the summer of 1917 before he crashed to his death on June 19, 1917. He scored seven victories between 1915 and 1917, and he also served with Felix Brocard's Escadrille 3 on the Western Front, where he scored one of his victories while flying a SPAD VII. After flying with the French, he claimed that "there's nothing about flying that we can learn from foreigners."