Spinners

Light for the fight

Follow my Leader

Very good work guys. A superb 3D model and top notch skins. Well done to you all, a great team effort.

Special K (OK, OK. I'm a cereal screenshot poster)

BAC Thunderstrikes of No.15 Squadron, RAF Strike Command, 1973

Descent to Hickam Field, Dec 7th, 1941

Ah! That was one of my top fantasies in the mid-late 1970's - well, that and the one involving me, a bottle of baby oil and the two girls from ABBA. However, successive copies of the RAF Yearbook informed us that the Tornado ADV was the 'correct' choice for the UK's requirements pockets. Well done mate!

Sweet!

Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-19PFL 'Farmer-M' - 921st Fighter Regiment, Vietnamese Peoples Air Force, 1972 Even though Operation Linebacker did not start until May 9th, 1972 the build-up of forces was clearly observed by both the North Vietnamese military and their Soviet advisors. The build-up was also clearly felt by the North Vietnamese on April 10th following the first large-scale B-52 raid when 12 B-52s and 53 supporting attack aircraft struck several petroleum storage facilities around Vinh. This attack prompted VPAF commanders to report that, with only around 200 interceptors, they simply did not have enough aircraft to deal with sustained attacks on strategic targets in the North leading to President Hồ Chí Minh urgently seeking further assistance from the Soviet Union. The Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, authorised the urgent transfer of 50 aircraft from the Soviet Air Force and US analysts were surprised to discover that these consisted of 30 MiG-17PF's and 20 of the hitherto unknown MiG-19PFL radar equipped interceptors. The MiG-19PFL's were pressed into service with the 921st Fighter Regiment based at Phúc Yên and although there were persistent reports that they were flown by Soviet pilots this has never been confirmed. A simple skin applied to the very inventive SM-12 by Cocas.

Blohm & Vos Bv 141 - Fourth Flight, No. 12 (Reconnaissance) Squadron, Finnish Air Force, June 1941 Not Finland but baffmeister's superb Battle of the Bulge Terrain Beta 0.90.

Finnish BV-141's - June 1941

https://flic.kr/p/2kwyfwM Moonlight Shadow

Agreed and probably more realistic on the timeline too as the Soviet's stopped further development of the MiG-19 far too soon to focus on the MiG-21.

FW190-A4

P-40 Twin?

Blohm & Voss BV 141NJ - Stab II/NJG2, Luftwaffe, Eastern Front, 1944 The female pilots of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment of the Soviet Air Forces flew harassment bombing missions against the invading German forces from 1942 onwards and soon gained the nickname of 'die Nachthexen' (the Night Witches) due to the surprise night-time attacks they skilfully performed in their wood and canvas Polikarpov U-2 biplanes. These nuisance attacks deprived German forces of sleep, keeping them on constant guard and had a wearing down, cumulative psychological effect on the German troops. Luftwaffe fighter pilots found it extremely hard to shoot down the slow U-2 biplanes which flew at treetop level at night and were thus very hard to see. Furthermore, the U-2s maximum speed was virtually identical to the stall speed of both the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 the principal fighter aircraft used on the Eastern Front. In September 1942, Stab II./NJG 2 established an experimental flight led by Major Heinz Schöpfel consisting of eight Blohm & Voss Bv 141 B-1 single-engine reconnaissance aircraft. With generally good low-speed handling characteristics plus an exceptional field of vision and with three pairs of eyes scanning the night sky it was thought that the Bv 141's could potentially be an effective counter to the U-2 nuisance attacks but early missions were unsuccessful. However, on the early evening of October 31st, 1942 Leutnant Otto Zabel and his crew shot down three of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment's U-2's and severley damaged a fourth. This caused the grounding of the regiment for the remainder of the night and further successes followed with another two U-2's destroyed in the air on the night of November 2nd plus two destroyed on the ground when Leutnant Gerhard Eisenach followed a damaged U-2 back to a makeshift airfield being used by the Night Witches and strafed the airfield setting two aircraft ablaze. Major Heinz Schöpfel shot down a further two U-2's on the night of November 5th and another on the following night. But, as the winter set in, the serviceability and spares situation of the Bv 141's became desperate and Major Heinz Schöpfel was soon forced to declare his diminished flight as non-operational. By early December, the Night Witches of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment had reclaimed the night and in the months that followed they would assist in the breakthrough of enemy defensive lines on the Terek River and support the Red Army's offensive operations in the Kuban River valley and Stavropol.

Nakajima A7N - Akagi Fighter Squadron, 1941 Even before the Mitsubishi A5M had entered service in early 1937 with the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) they started looking for its eventual replacement. By the late summer of 1937 the IJN issued their bold requirements to Nakajima and Mitsubishi for a new carrier-based fighter aircraft calling for manoeuverability at least equal to that of the A5M but with a top speed of 500 km/h at 4,000m with a climb to 3,000m in less than 9.5 minutes. Furthermore they asked for an endurance of two hours at normal power but with a staggering endurance of at least six hours at an economical cruising speed. Both firms started preliminary design work towards the end of 1937 but Mitsubishi soon gained the upper hand when Nakajima's team considered the bold requirements to be unachievable and withdrew from the competition in January 1938. Much to the chagrin of Mitsubishi's chief designer, Jiro Horikoshi, Nakajima were immediately allowed to rejoin the competition with a revised design called the A7N featuring the top-secret "super duralumin" aluminium alloy (a key feature of the Mitsubishi A6M design) which had been under development by Sumitomo Metal Industries since 1936. This alloy was lighter, stronger and more ductile than other alloys used at the time but it was prone to corrosive attack requiring specially developed anti-corrosion coatings applied after fabrication. Mitsubishi had planned the use of super duralumin allied to their own anti-corrosion coatings and it was later revealed that the IJN had passed these two commercial advantages onto Nakajima in order to get two superior competing designs. With an initial time advantage Mitsubishi developed their A6M design into the highly succesful Type 0 'Zero-sen' carrier fighter which entered service with the 12th Rengo Kōkūtai in July 1940 and were soon in action scoring their first air-to-air victories shooting down Soviet-built Polikarpov I-15s and I-16s of the Chinese Nationalist Air Force without loss to themselves. But the IJN could see the potential of Nakajima's design and in May 1938 they awarded Nakajima a production order for 300 aircraft. During the remainder of 1938 Nakajima worked on their revised A7N design and introduced a further refinement by incorporating an oversized propeller spinner whose outside diameter was the same as the engine cowl with the spinner having a small hole at it's centre allowing cooling air to be directed through ductwork in the spinner to blow rearwards along the cylinder heads around the circumference of the radial engine (the hottest area of any air-cooled radial engine). This enabled Nakajima to give the A7N a highly streamlined front fuselage resulting in a useful speed advantage over the draggier engine installation of the A6M. For the carried-based role the A7N featured a wide-tracked, inwards-retracting landing gear (designed to withstand a sink rate of 4.5 meters per second) with hydraulic wheel brakes. Nakajima's chosen powerplant for the A7N was their own NK1E Sakae 31 rated at 1,130hp and boosted to 1,210 hp with water-methanol injection and this was to prove an exceptionally rugged powerplant. Unlike the heavily framed 'greenhouse' canopy of the Mitsubishi A6M, Nakajima designed the A7N to have excellent all-round vision thanks to a vacuum-formed 'bubble' canopy combined with an optically flat three-panel windscreen. Development continued during 1939 with the prototype A7N taking to the air on August 31st, 1939 - this being the first of a total of six A7N prototypes. Nakajima began production of the A7N at its Koizumi plant in Gunma Prefecture in September 1940 and the aircraft entered service with the 13th Rengo Kōkūtai in February 1941. Later in the year, A7N's were embarked aboard the IJN carriers Akagi and Kaga taking part in the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941 as part of the third group of the 'first wave' attacks specifically tasked with the destruction of aircraft at Ford Island, Hickam Field, Wheeler Field, Barber's Point and Kaneohe.

Tora! Tora! Tora!

Beautiful - Thank you Torno!

Very well executed. Superb!

BAC Thunderstrike - 348 Mira, Hellenic Air Force, 1974

Cross Deck Operations, 1951

Spitfires en route to intercept Mosquitoes as part of the RAF's re-enactment of the Amiens Raid at the 1950 Farnborough Display Note the two 'bubbletops'