My 1/32 Models

By Piet van Wykde Vries

Hello from a grey and wintry South Africa. My name is Piet van Wyk de Vries, and I have been an admirer of your site ever since I took up modelling again. Of course at school I had the usual collection of 1/72 examples dipped in glue and more decorated than painted, but when , at the age of 31 I decided to revisit my hobbies, I could not bring myself to commit any half measures. So I bought an airbrush, a pair of tweezers, an Airfix 1/24 Fw190, and linked myself to sites like yours and went for it.

I have now completed almost 8 models, two years later. And I have switched to mainly 1/32 scale since there are so many great subjects in that scale. I know this is not many models, and that in the scheme of things I am a green beginner. I only have to look at your galleries to be reminded of that. Yet I would like to send you these few pictures as a way of including South Africa in you community (I could not find your message board) and in the vain hope that you might include them in your gallery section or other relevant section. Also I have just this last week replaced my stolen camera and I suppose I just want to share my first experiments!

1) Bf 109G-10 of The Royal Hungarian Air Force. It is a 1/24 from Trumpeter. This aircraft may or may not have been flown by the ace Sgt Istvan "Koponya" Fabian, who survived the war with 17 victories, plus 6 more unconfirmed.

2) Fw 190A-6 of Georg "Murr" Schott . This was my first. It is the odd-fitting 1/24 Airfix kit. Schott was a veteran of the Spanish Civil war and the Battle of Britain.On 27 September 1943, Oberleutnant Schott was shot down during aerial combat with Allied bombers over the North Sea, in this aircraft, W.Nr. 550 476 "White 11". By this time he had claimed 19 victories, 3 of them B17 bombers. He baled out and crawled into his life raft. An intensive search was launched for him but to no avail. Night fell and all traces of him were lost, until 11 October of that same year, when his body washed up in his dinghy on the island of Sylt.

3) Nieuport 17 of Charles Nungesser. It is the 1/32 Academy kit. Most engines during WW1 were lubricated with Castor Oil. A product of the tropical castor bean plant (Ricinus communus), genuine castor oil was unavailable late in the war to the Germans due to the Allied blockade. The Germans had to make due with a synthetic substitute that severely shortened engine life.100,000 acres of land in the southern US had to be planted with castor beans to supply allied efforts. Ground crews Spent as much time wiping off Castor oil from fabric as anything else. I played with this effect a bit. The superior lubricating qualities of castor oil was offset by it’s short life and tendency to turn into a plastic-like goop. These engines sprayed considerable quantities of the oil (a common remedy for constipation) back into the cockpit and over the aircraft, where the pilots would ingest it. Pilots at the western front had therefore almost permanent light diarea. Wiping burnt castor oil off silver painted fabric is perhaps the closest mankind has come to proving that there is a god, and that he hates us :)

4) A6M2 Zero of the Akagi Group at Pearl Harbor, Flown by P01C Tadao Kimura, wingman for Lt. Saburo Shindo, second wave Buntaicho, Zero Group Lead. Kimura and Shindo were of the few Japanese who took part at Pearl Harbour to survive the war, while Itaya was killed in 1944. Kimura died a few years ago in Osaka Japan, while Shindo lives in Hiroshima City. It is the 1/24 Trumpeter kit.

© 2005 Piet van Wyk de Vries

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This article was published on Friday, September 27 2013; Last modified on Saturday, May 14 2016