..another Revell/Eduard Dr.1 - Richthofen's last machine 425/17 "Three wings for the Red Baron"

 

..time for a red Triplane. What collection of aeroplane models worthy of the name could possibly fail to feature Richthofen's Dr.1? This is the Revell re-box of the Eduard kit - and I'm still having trouble aligning the wings. For some reason the middle wing is slightly askew. 

Richthofen's all-red Dr. 1 was 425/17 - and this was the machine in which the 'Rittmeister' met his end. However Revell supply the old style crosses which is not accurate for the Red Baron's last flight.

Spot the 'deliberate' mistake - I've put the 'Axial' stickers on a non-Axial prop. Will have to fix that. Finishing was not as straight-forward as it might have seemed. Firstly what 'red' to use? and, secondly, how to 'weather' it? In the end I elected to go with  Humbrol 'crimson red' (132) brush-painted in very thin layers and to 'tone' it down a little I tried the oil dot filter method..

Photographed on Leon Bennett's "Three wings for the Red Baron" (Helion, 2019) - a treatise on early aeronautical science and the cul-de-sac that was the triplane. The book examines why exactly Richthofen was such an enthusiastic advocate for a machine in which both himself and other leading German aces lost their lives. Spoiler alert - it even appears that his 'admiration' for the Sopwith Triplane was based on no more than hearsay...and if Leon should happen to chance on this page can I just point out to him that 'la vache' has another meaning in French...

See my other Eduard Triplane build on this blog here

US WWII fighter pilot memoirs - Mustang Ace Bob Goebel

  I was wondering what the best American fighter pilot memoirs are. I know that several stand out of course, such as Edwards Park’s wry "Nanette", described elsewhere as a " whimsical and moving account of a young pilot thrown against the aggressive Zero and Oscar pilots of Imperial Japan in the less-than-stellar P-39 Airacobra". Regarded as a classic of the South-west Pacific war - 'Nanette' was the name of his aircraft - it was sold as a novel (perhaps leaning on the 'Catch 22' popularity of the seventies), but, apparently, most of what he wrote did actually occur. Set in New Guinea before the Allied Air Forces had air superiority it is now regarded as a very well written memoir of the period. 'Nanette' was actually a P-400 (taken over from RAF order), and had worse performance than the P-39s which were sent to the Fifth Air Force in Australia, for service in the South West Pacific Theatre.

 Donald Lopez’ "Into the Teeth of the Tiger" is a memoir from a P-40 and P-51 pilot in China who later became deputy director of the National Air and Space Museum, not forgetting of course Robert S. Johnson’s 'Thunderbolt!', a gritty account of the early days of fighter operations by P-47s against the cream of the Luftwaffe, similar to 'Mustang Pilot' by Richard E. Turner ( a disappointingly slim volume)  or John Foster’s 'Hell in the Heavens', about a Marine fighter pilot in the Southwest Pacific. However I am not a fan of Anderson’s 'To Fly and Fight'  (357th FG Mustang pilot’s memoir of the 1944-1945 European air war) As for his friend Yeager, the less said the better. I much rather prefer the far more modest and intelligent Robert Goebel's 'Mustang Ace'.

Goebel joined the 31st FG, the leading fighter group in the Mediterranean, as they turned in their Spitfires for new P-51s. Within weeks, Bob Goebel had flown his first combat missions and had lost his element leader, shot down in a swirling dogfight. But he mastered the art of combat flying. A steady succession of bomber-escort missions over southeastern Europe slowly and then more rapidly forced Lieutenant Goebel to settle in and master aerial gunnery and the mentally taxing high-speed dogfights in which he became engaged. At last, he shot down his first German fighter. And he advanced to positions of leadership, in due course leading the entire 31st Fighter Group deep into enemy territory. At length, he shot down a fifth German and thus became an ace - a P-51 Mustang ace. And then he shot down three Germans in one day on a mission to Ploesti, Romania. He flew to Russia and back, and supported the invasion of southern France. In the end, by September 1944, he had eleven confirmed victories to his credit and was one of the 308th Fighter Squadron's most respected combat leaders. When he was sent home at the end of his combat tour, Captain Bob Goebel was not yet 22 years old. Post-war he was a physicist with NASA (IIRC) and his memoir brims with vivid descriptions of flying and fighting in a high performance WWII fighter. He passed away in February 2011.

Book Review - "Monty's Men: The British Army and the Liberation of Europe" by John Buckley

 

.. Buckley's previous work "British Armour in Normandy" was the sort of wonderful eye-opening re-appraisal of the British Army's performance post-D-Day that Max Hastings' 'pro-German' treatments had always warranted. It is thus easy to agree with Buckley in this new work that the reputation of the British Army has suffered through a " disturbing" and very unflattering comparison with the German Army. You see it all the time on the net and in the literature - there is a sort of 'fan-boy' admiration for the German Army and its 'flamboyant' commanders - despite the ideological motivations, despite the racial and criminal undertones, despite harsh 'internal' terror - which is ultimately based on a very narrow definition of what constitutes military 'effectiveness'. Buckley argues that this image of German 'superiority'- largely based on the 'Blitzkrieg' of the early war years - conceals and ignores many many shortcomings and deficiencies on the German side and almost toally ignores those areas in which the British were much stronger - artillery firepower, logistical competence etc etc. By repeatedly attempting to mount ad-hoc and unsupported operations post-1941 the German Army delivered some short-term success but lived under constant threat of potential near-disaster. As Buckley argues the British conduct of operations predicated on firepower and logistics were not inferior to the Germans; if anything these kinds of operational methods were more sophisticated, requiring as they did, greater integration of the various operational constituents to achieve the desired affect.

No doubt the Allied armies "citizen soldiers" may have seemed lke 'amateurs' compared to German veterans skilled since 1939 - but 'amateurishness' - or at least what some commentators see as such - was a part of the Allies' military culture. As one commentator put it, .." we were not fierce fighting men like the Germans, we were civilians in uniform. Our equipment was bloody awful, but we did our best and we got there in the end.." Unlike the Germans. Post- D-Day the Germans, worn down by six years of constant conflict and ground warfare, were scraping the bottom of barrel, sending Volksturm and Luftwaffe Field Divisions into battle. Manpower concerns were a prime Allied consideration - Britain had only limited resources and materiel and Monty made up for this by substituting firepower and a deliberate approach to operations. And after September 1944 the Germans were largely fighting on terrain which was best suited to defence - the Dutch-German frontier area is broken by canals , rivers and full of woods.

From the British perspective, morale and manpower were key issues affecting the British 'style' of waging war. Another was command and leadership style - leadership, morale and unit cohesion, rather than racial or political doctrine, were the central tenants in the production of fighting power. When the British recognised the potential fragility of the morale of the men deployed on the ground, Montgomery and other senior commanders sought to develop an operational method that developed fighting power that achieved objectives. The Germans from the First World War through the Second World War had little understanding of theses levels of war as Buckley makes clear and woefully underperformed in this respect. There is some truth that at the smallest unit level the Germans were better than the British, however, this was of little use if it could not be translated into operational or strategic effectiveness. Integration of firepower and movement was a much more 'mature' military philosophy, which ultimately saw Montgomery accepting German surrender on the Baltic less than one year after the landings in Normandy..

The prevailing view of the British army as "slow and unimaginative" after the D-day landings is not so much 'white-washed' as some might imagine, but carefully and logically 'explained'. Monty's 'system' -built around the rock of its artillery firepower - was very carefully set up to exploit weaknesses in German battle tactics and to stifle and blunt the German manoeuvre expertise. For those in thrall to 'breakouts' and American knockout punches, Buckley goes some way in setting the record straight by giving the reader an insight into the attritional battles that made Cobra possible - three times the German armour employed in the Ardennes was wiped out by Commonwealth forces during the supposed stalemate and frustration of Caen. As such Buckley's history moves us on from the now hackneyed view expounded by Hastings and D'Este that the British army was somehow less effective than the Germans or the Americans. Monty may have been a flawed, egocentric and difficult man, but he was a man who got results, even if he did not get full credit. Was he flawless? No. Was he great? Decidedly so.

Book reviews - Profiles of German tanks, Panzer book III, Claes Sundin - Tigers in Combat III - Schneider, Helion & Co

Claes Sundin’s latest profile book is here - Panzer book III features the entire range of German AFVs and has taken some ten months to research, write and illustrate. As Claes states in his Foreword, this new volume represents the ‘pinnacle’ of his work on German tanks. Each artwork is more detailed and more accurate than ever thanks in part to the team of ‘experts’ behind the book, most notably camouflage and markings specialist David E. Brown who has supplied a detailed overview of German Panzer camo development and evolution that opens the 65 profile artworks. A large format landscape volume, each artwork - one tank per page - is accompanied by a detailed text setting the context and relating the action in which the tank was involved. Highly recommended.

Although only 1,347 Tiger I tanks were built between August 1942 and August 1944 the Tiger remains one of the iconic tanks of World War II. Although many of its design antecedents were somewhat outmoded - thick slab-sided non-sloping armour for one -  and it was deployed in some ‘hopeless’ theatres (Tunisia February 1943) the huge 88mm gun was unrivaled on the battlefield and the Tiger quickly acquired a reputation that made it the most feared German AFV on all fronts. Schneider’s  third book in the “Tigers in Combat” series is a massive volume of over 500 pages with 1,200 photographs as a tribute to this colossal vehicle. This third volume complements the previous two books in the series by looking at all aspects of Tiger operations - not so much through a unit-by-unit chronology as in the first two volumes but by considering in-depth aspects of Tiger operations - crew training, deployment and tactics. While concentrating primarily on the Tiger I - there being far fewer images of the King Tiger - you could say that everything is here; organisation charts; great details of how the crews trained and operated the tank; a comprehensive outline of how the tanks were deployed and a review of the tactics used by Tiger units, including details of how the tank featured as part of the Nazi propaganda machine with a good number of (untranslated) facsimile reproductions of period newspaper articles.

The book is based around an archive of well over 1,000 photos. Clear and well-chosen to complement the text most are in black and white – although there are a few in colour. (These colour pictures are mostly of captured Tigers from American archives.) There are hundreds of high quality  photographs of the Tiger, that cover every aspect of the tank in service and there are also numerous pictures of support vehicles of all types as well as many pictures of crewmen both at work and at play. There is an enormous amount of detail in these photographs, many are either previously unseen or little known. One of my favourites is in the short section that shows the visit by the Japanese military attaché that includes a wonderful photograph of unmistakably Japanese crew manning Tiger 055 at the Senne military training ground.

One of the more fascinating aspects of this book is the attention to fine detail. Where else would you find several photographs of tank crews washing themselves and their clothes? There is even a picture of a bath tub stowed to the rear of one Tiger. This is an intimate view of the Tiger crews and many of the pictures will inspire model makers. There is a very interesting section devoted to food and eating and logistic resupply with plenty of images suggesting diorama possibilities - half-tracks and trucks and field kitchens set up alongside Russian village houses.

The book also covers other unusual aspects of the Tiger’s history. There is a nicely illustrated section that examines in detail the Henschel and Sohn factories at Kassel. The factory layout is shown and the accompanying photographs show Tigers on the production line as well as the banks of machinery necessary to build the tank. The text includes fascinating extracts from an unpublished memoir by Herr Pertuss concerning Tiger production at the Henschel Werkes. The section ends with details of the air raids that badly damaged the factory.

The chapter entitled “Operating the Tiger” covers the legendary “Tigerfibel” which was the illustration-based handbook for the Tiger. There are numerous drawings in this chapter which will prove invaluable to the model maker who wants to replicate fine detail particularly in the larger scales. There is a wealth of interior detail both in the form of sketches and photographs. For the diorama builder there are numerous photographs of repairs being carried out to the Tiger – particularly to the running gear. My favourite photograph features a platoon of around 20 men struggling to turn over one length of track.

The next chapter covers “Deployment” and many of the photographs show some of the hazards involved in moving a 56 ton tank. Many photographs show Tigers bogged down or incapacitated as the result of slipping off a road or track. Others record the Herculean effort needed by recovery teams to get the unfortunate vehicles back into service. There are several pictures of 18 ton “Famo” half-tracks being used to recover hapless Tigers, often several half-tracks were needed to affect a recovery. The chapter includes details of the work involved in preparing the Tiger for rail transport. It is well known that because the Tiger was so wide, the normal combat tracks (and the outer road wheels on the early versions) had to be removed and replaced with a special railway track. There are numerous photographs showing this laborious work and some of the disasters that occurred if the loading or unloading didn’t go according to plan. As with the other chapters there is much inspiration here for the model maker and diorama builder.

In the final chapter; “Tactics” we see the Tiger in action. Many of the photographs show Tigers being prepared for battle and some show the damage sustained after the battle. There is a series of pictures showing repairs being made to damaged Tigers using the “Straßenbock-Kran” (Mobile gantry crane - not 'portable' - one of several quirks in the translation throughout the book!) As with the other chapters there are numerous photographs here that will inspire the model maker. The Tiger was an awesome weapon but the extensive time and effort required in keeping the tank running and recovering and repairing damaged tanks is clearly shown in this book.

This review has only scratched the surface of this fascinating book. The author must be congratulated in bringing together all the pictures and providing informative text and captions that make this a captivating read. If you have even a passing interest in the Tiger this book is a “must have”. If you are only looking to acquire one single volume on the Tiger then it might as well be this one. If you already have an extensive library of Tiger books then this is still a 'no-brainer'. The original cover price will obviously have put many potential purchasers off ( no, I rarely if ever spend £70 on a book..) but if you look on ebay you can find traders (in the UK) currently -due to the Covid cancellation of all Militaria fairs - selling this at less than half price, hence my purchase now.