Spinners

Grumman J2F Duck - ASR Flight, Royal Dhimari Air Force, 1942 Skin Credit: Charles

In theory yes. But I've had a little try at 125kph and I exploded on the water. Eider have another but it got me down.

Yes it is. Quirky looking thing that saw service with 3 or 4 South American countries.

Grumman Duck Mk.I - 724 Naval Air Squadron, Royal Navy, 1945

Duck!

Palestine 1948: An Israeli Fiat G.55 Centauro gets the better of an Egyptian Macchi C.205 Veltro

Supermarine Spitfire Mk.I - No.113 Fighter Squadron, Polish Air Force, 1939 In July 1938 a group of Polish Air Force officers arrived at the Supermarine works for a technical presentation on the Spitfire Type 300 and to watch a series of demonstration flights of the Spitfire flown by Supermarine's chief test pilot Mutt Summers. The Poles left suitably impressed and presented their thoughts directly to a small Parliamentary committee headed by Ignacy Mościcki (the President of the Republic of Poland). With the indigenous PZL.50 Jastrząb fighter still under construction and months away from flying, Mościcki forced through an order for 32 Spitfire Type 300 fighters for delivery during the Spring of 1939. This order was approved by the Air Ministry and a contract between the two governments was finalised on November 18th, 1938. Starting in May 1939, initial deliveries were made to the 113th Fighter Squadron of the Polish Air Force based near Warsaw and by early August the squadron were fully equipped with 16 Spitfire Mk.I's all with the early flat cockpit canopy and two-bladed Watts propellor. At dawn on September 1st, 1939 the squadron were immediately into action defending Warsaw from Luftwaffe Ju-86 bombers and Bf-109 escort fighters and over the next few days the squadron claimed 15 victories for the loss of 3 Spitfires.

September 3rd, 1939 - Flying Officer Guy Gibson heads towards the German fleet near Wilhelmshaven Historical Footnote: The force of six Hampden bombers was recalled whilst en route and Gibson would have to wait nine months before his next operational sortie

Shedding some excess baggage from 'The Flying Suitcase'

The change in checkerboard orientation is relatively quite recent.

The VL Myrsky masquerading as the PZL.45 Sokół

AFAIK the colour of Polish aircraft was Khaki and not brown. I used an illustration of a PZL P.11C from an aircraft modelling website as my guide. I do have some white in my weathering/dirt layer so perhaps that is lightening it a bit too much.

Spitfire Scramble! September 1st, 1939.

Blackburn Bramley Mk.IA - No.106 Squadron, RAF Bomber Command, September 1939

Blackburn Bramley Mk.I - No.10 Squadron, RAF Bomber Command, 1937 Air Ministry Specification B.9/32 issued in 1932 called for a twin-engined day bomber with high performance and unlike many contemporary Air Ministry Specifications there was no restriction on aircraft empty weight. Vickers, Handley Page and Blackburn all responded and all three companies designed distictly different aircraft ranging in weight from the Vickers Type 271 (Wellington) at 18,000lbs empty weight, through to the Handley Page HP.52 (Hampden) at 12,500lbs empty weight and down to the Blackburn B-6 at just 10,000lbs empty weight. Air Ministry officials were critical of the Blackburn design for being deficient in range and payload but conceded that the design had potential and therefore issued Air Ministry Specification B.27/33 for a twin-engined light bomber to cover a production order for 100 Blackburn B-6 aircraft later christened as the Blackburn Bramley. The development of the Blackburn Bramley moved smoothly during 1934 with no technical issues and on July 14th,1935 the prototype Bramley (K4012) made it's first flight almost a full year ahead of the Vickers Wellington and Handley Page Hampden. Flight-testing was helped by the Bramley being powered by the trouble-free Bristol Perseus nine-cylinder, single-row radial engine. Initially rated at a modest 580 h.p. the Perseus was quickly uprated as improvements were introduced and by 1936 production engines were delivering 810 h.p. which was adequate for the lightly armoured Bramley. Entering service with No.10 Squadron of RAF Bomber Command in May 1937 the Bramley Mk.I's initially wore the same NIVO green as the Handley Page Heyford's they had replaced but later switched to the dark earth and green camo with black undersides as used on Bomber Command's other new aircraft. By the time of the Munich Crisis in September 1939 four squadrons of Bomber Command were operating the Bramley but by the start of World War 2 the Bramley had passed from front-line service in the UK but would return to service with the RAF in the Middle-East at the end of 1940.

Gloster Meteor F.8 - IDF

The Kawasaki Ki-48 'Lily' masquerading as the Blackburn Bramley pre-war bomber...

Kawasaki Ki-52 'Hilary' - 110th Sentai, Imperial Japanese Army, 1942

You should tweet about it.

Dornier Do-17K - 1st Bomber regiment, Parani Army Air Force, 1941 In June 1936, the Yugoslavian government ordered 36 Do 17E bombers from Germany and following protracted negotiations they eventually succeeded in obtaining a production licence to build the majority of these as the Do 17K variant powered by the French Gnome-Rhône Mistral Major engine. After production for the Royal Yugoslav Air Force was completed in April 1939 the Yugoslavian government were approached by Paran who wanted a new modern bomber aircraft for the rapidly expanding Parani Army Air Force and the sale of 24 Do 17K's was agreed. Entering service with the 1st Bomber Regiment of the Parani Army Air Force in early 1941 the Do 17K's were first used in anger in a successful attack on the Al'Mahrag Docks in northern Dhimar on September 21st, 1941. With only a handful of P-36's defending northern Dhimar, the Do 17K's of the 1st Bomber Regiment roamed virtually unchallenged over northern Dhimar until the arrival of the Republic P-43 Lancers in the Spring of 1942. Skin Credit: Charles

I tried Il-2 and Strike Fighters Gold at exactly the same time back at the end of 2007 but, sadly, I just couldn't get on with the IL-2 series.

Yak-15 'Pero' - Soviet Air Force, 1946 The daring theft of a pre-production Jumo 004B axial flow turbojet engine from the Messerschmitt test facility at Leipeim airfield by Soviet spies in June 1943 enabled the Soviet Union to quickly catch-up with this new technology and before the year was out a team at 26 GAZ, headed by Klimov, were producing copies of the Jumo 004B as the RD-10 for a variety of planned Soviet tactical aircraft including a new single-seat jet fighter designed by the Yakovlev OKB. To save time, Yakovlev based the new design on their successful Yak-3 piston-engined fighter with the RD-10 jet engine mounted underneath the forward fuselage with the jet exhaust exiting underneath the centre fuselage protected by a steel heatshield. The wings and tail were largely unchanged and a useful armanent of two 23mm Nudelman-Suranov NS-23 cannon was added to the new nose section. Designated as the Yak-15 the new aircraft made a successful first flight in April 1944. However, the successful repelling of the Allied invasion by German forces in June 1944 allowed Germany to bolster their eastern front and slow down the Soviet advance to a crawl and especially during the harsh winter of 1944-45. This delay allowed Germany to deploy more and more advanced weapons and whilst the Me-262's remained largely in the west the radical Blohm & Voss P.170 three-engined 'Schnellbomber' was particularly effective on the eastern front. In February, 1945 the Yak-15 entered service with the 437th Fighter Aviation Regiment at Vodogon in the Novgorod Oblast and finally gave the Soviet Air Force the ability to intercept the P.170 nuisance raiders.