Author: Vladimír Kafka

This is a 312 Czechoslovak squadron machine from June-July 1944, shortly after D Day. I wanted to finish this model for last year’s 80th anniversary of the Normandy invasion, but as always, real life got in the way, so I present it now, almost a year later.😅

The Blackburn Roc is famous for being probably the most unsuccessful British design that nevertheless somehow made it into serial production and even saw some limited combat duty. This is another victory of mind over plastic, ending a very protracted build of a niche WW2 subject.😅

The Gladiator, one of the most famous late 1930s biplane fighters, a brave underdog of the early WW2 years, probably doesn’t need a long introduction. The build was fun, even though “a bit” protracted.😁

Finally, I can present you another representative of my favorite air force.😉 I used Hasegawa plastic parts with a lot of my own 3D printed stuff.

The Mitsubishi Ka-14 was a prototype of the famous A5M Claude, a predecessor to the even more famous A6M Zero. Its most distinctive visual feature is the inverted gull wing with beautiful elliptical wingtips (however, the inverted gull shape was abandoned in the production version of the A5M), and in the case of this particular prototype version, the interesting modified engine cowling.

The Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa (Oscar) was one of the most numerous Japanese WW2 fighters, a land-based contemporary of the more famous Mitsubishi A6M Zero. 

The Curtiss BFC-2 was basically a fighter-bomber version of the Curtiss F11C Goshawk. It was the last of the Curtiss naval fighters, outliving its planned replacement, the unfortunate BF2C. This particular machine served on USS Saratoga with the VB-3B “High Hat” squadron in 1937. 

Polikarpov I-16 type 10, also known as Mosca (Fly), flown in 1938 during the Spanish Civil War by Eduardo Claudín Moncada. If you want to build a decent model of a Spanish I-16 in 1/72, you need to backdate a later version. I don’t mind, as I enjoy such conversions.

My model depicts a No. 310 Sqn RAF machine, flown during Autumn 1940 by P/O Emil Fechtner, DFC. On October 29, 1940, he collided mid-air with one of his fellow pilots, Jaroslav Maly. While Maly managed to belly land his damaged plane, Fechtner crashed into the ground.

Saiman 200 was a relatively insignificant trainer plane, serving in the Italian air force from 1940 to 1947.