Rudolf Berthold's Fokker D.VII

I found myself on a trip, and I had a spare evening. Therefore I picked one of those Revell kits with a model, paint. glue and a brush as well as black, brown and white paint to see what could be done. Metal would have to be provided by a pencil. The kit is from the 19060s, and the details are a bit chunky, but the scale and proportions are quite good. So is the fit. Sink marks and mold lines had to be filled and removed, though. The cockpit is only occupied by a so-called pilot on a peg, and with my limited selection of paints, I decided to scratchbuild a seat out of an old Metrocard and leave the pilot in the proverbial officer's mess. Now, the problem with this kit happens to be the decals. The lozenge underside decals just provide outlines, and you are supposed to fill in the colors yourself. I couldn't really provide a decent match with the limited amount of colors, but filling in the lozenges was actually almost meditative. The picture provides a garish image of what the colors actually look like. They are more muted in reality. The problem is that the decals to not stick properly. With nothing else available, I had to use some diluted white glue in a frustrating attempt to get the decals to stick to the wings and fuselage. The decals were also prone to shattering and not really flexible, so colorful language added to the red, blue and white of Berthold's aircraft. A very dark grey, almost black, wash provided some weathering of the engine area. The base is a hotel key card with some static grass that was added once I came back home.

Oskar Gustav Rudolf Berthold (24 March 1891 – 15 March 1920) became a pilot before the war by taking flying lessons in private. He becmae one of the first German aces, scoring his first victory in 1915 while flying an AEG G.II bomber as a gunship, since the Eindecekers were only allowed to fly defensive on the German side of the front lines. He flew for six units and cammanded five of them while scoring 44 victories. Sixteen were scored while flying one-handed as a result of one of his many injuries. Berthold was killed by a mob in Hamburg in 1920 while fighting with one of the post-war Freikorps. Contrary to popular myth, he was not strangled with his own Pour le Merite.