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Avia BH-3 was a fighter plane designed by Pavel Beneš and Miroslav Hajn for Czechoslovakian Air Force and holds the position of one of the first monoplane aircraft ever put into serial production worldwide. Test pilots praised the plane’s speed and agility, however, the military pilots were less impressed, as they were used to much more stable biplanes which were easier to handle. The new Avia, on the other hand, required the pilot’s attention during every part of the flight and was difficult to land safely.

I always liked the biplane fighters of the pre-WWII period. In the RAF, one of the last biplane designs reaching the frontline service was the Gloster Gladiator. After a successful RAF introduction in mid 1935, Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm (FAA) showed interest in the type and had sixty Mk.II Gladiators modified for service with the FAA. These entered service in 1938 as Sea Gladiators.

The Mitsubishi A5M2b was a Japanese carrier-based fighter aircraft. It was the world’s first low-wing monoplane shipborne fighter to enter service and the predecessor to the famous Mitsubishi A6M “Zero”. The Allied code name was Claude.

Little Aero A-18 called “Špaček” (Starling) was the first serial production fighter plane of Aero, a small new factory back then. One of the conditions set by MNO (Ministry of National Defence) was to use WW1 engines BMW IIIa with an output of 136 kW. It is not a lot of power, but A-18 was a small and light aircraft. Despite the small engine output, A-18 was capable of reaching a speed of 229 km/h and was capable of climbing up to 8000 meters.

Potez 25 was a French single-engined, twin-seated biplane with a fixed landing gear. It was a simple construction, praised for its reliability and easy maintenance. Between 1925 and 1934, almost 4000 were built for the French air force. Another 2500 were built for export, for example to Indochina, Poland, Romania, Greece, Brazil, Japan, or Estonia.

In my previous article about Caudron C.450, I promised that the next in line will be its successor, Caudron C.460. It didn’t take long and I’ve put the box with the model on my table and started modeling.

I started the build of the Hummel (“bumblebee”), Siebel’s eye-catchy sports airplane design last autumn and recently returned to it after a long pause. This shortrun model kit doesn’t look too inviting in the box, but surprisingly the build was really not that bad.

Alois Šmolík’s design of Letov Š.20 was a standard fighter plane of the Czechoslovak Air Force during the 1920s. Its demilitarised version, which was utilized by the Hanácký flying club in the Moravian city of Olomouc between 1934 and 1937, is presented by me and the Kovozavody Prostejov manufacturer.