The Devil

He was the antithesis of what a fighter pilot should be.  Tall, introverted and sickly, he preferred not the company of his peers, but solitary intellectual pursuits such as reading and martial arts.  He kept no written account of his victories, tactics or techniques.  Very little is written about the man, and even less is understood.  In the air, he was singularly focused, not on the art of flying, but on the art of destroying the enemy. Yet he was unequalled at the controls of an aircraft.  It is said he flew as if he was the aircraft.  His closest friend, famed Japanese fighter ace Saburo Sakai, said of him:

       "Never have I seen a man with a fighter plane do what (he) would do with his Zero.  His aerobatics
       were all at once breathtaking, brilliant, totally unpredictable, impossible, and heart-stirring to witness."

He did not revel in his victories, yet loathed ending an engagement without one.  He was sullen, moody and, at times, full of self doubt.  His vision of his own fiery fate impelled him to request transfer to the divine wind, or kamikaze, of the honored special attack squadrons.  The request was denied, but the fate was granted.  He was the highest ranking ace of Imperial Japan.  His name was Warrant Officer Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, but to the allied pilots of the pacific theater he was known as The Devil of Rabaul, or simply “The Devil”.

His A6M3 Model 22 Zero fighter, tail code UI-105, looked as sinister as his sobriquet.  A Mitsubishi product, its factory applied gray paint was haphazardly over-sprayed and splattered with dark green to meet a 1943 directive that all combat aircraft will have two-tone camouflage .  In doing so, the ground crews of the 251^st Kokutai created a monster of an airplane, so fitting of The Devil. 

He was a feared member of the Clean-Up Trio, a triad of Japanese aces whose collective scoreboard tallied 185 victories.  With fellow members Saburo Sakai and Toshio Ota, Nishizawa once performed  an inconceivable aerial display directly over the allied airfield at Port Moresby; a taunting  “dance of death” consisting of six aerial loops on a dare that he himself perpetuated.   As the air show transpired, the island’s entire population of allied air forces squinted skyward, awed by the spectacle of three enemy pilots performing a ballet of exquisite airmanship.  Then, like ghosts, the three Zeroes slipped away into the pacific sky.  Not a shot was fired by either side during the entire demonstration.

In his short career, Nizhizawa scored an unofficial 87 victories (some figures show as high as 211), fighting his way through the New Guinea, Guadalcanal and Philippines campaigns.   He was Imperial Japan’s leading ace. It is entirely probable that, had he survived, a pilot of Nishizawa’s talent and focus would never have been defeated by an allied pilot in air combat.  The point is moot, however:  On October 26, 1944 he was a passenger on a Japanese transport plane that was summarily shot down and destroyed by U.S. Navy Hellcats.  There were no survivors. Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, The Devil of Rabaul, was 24 years old.     

THE MODEL:  Building scale models is a learning experience, whether you are a novice builder or a master craftsman.  With several years experience under one’s belt and access to proper tools and equipment, the learning curve tends to flatten out a bit. But just when you think you have a handle on things, reality and shortcomings slap you square in the face.  This is one of the reasons building scale models still fascinates me.  There are two truths in model building:  One, there is ALWAYS room for improvement; and two, a build NEVER goes as planned. Such were my follies trying to build and paint Hasegawa’s 1/48 scale A6M3 “Zero Fighter” Type 22 in Hiroyoshi Nishizawa’s sinister looking scheme.

Things started out relatively easily and quickly. Coming out of the cellophane, the sprues and parts were crisp and free of defects.  After soaking the trees in soapy water, I turned my attention to the cockpit.  I quickly threw together a resin office with an add-on Ultracast seat, shot it with a blend of US interior green and white (my Mitsubishi “office” formula), washed and dry-bushed to good effect. 

While I was at it, I decided to paint the wheel wells, which I normally do at this stage. I debated coating the wheel wells with aotake, the clear greenish-blue lacquer that was applied to corrosion-prone interior aluminum surfaces of Japanese aircraft. In fact, at one point I did.  Most current sources state aotake was not used in the landing gear bays or interior doors of Mitsubishi-built A6M aircraft (all A6M3’s were Mitsubishi-built), but only on Nakajima-built variants.  I am under the impression that it was used to some capacity, but a majority of recent historical opinion cannot be ignored.  Not to discount the many expert modelers out there who have chosen otherwise, but I ultimately opted to paint over the aotake with the exterior IJN gray color.  Some facts are lost to history and this seems to be one of them.

I next assembled the fuselage, wings and empennage structures with no problems whatsoever.   The resin cockpit needed a few minor tweaks to get it to snuggle into the fuselage, but that is to be expected.  As I prepped for painting, I had a minor setback: While sanding the top fuselage seam, I inadvertently sanded off a very fine recessed panel line on the starboard spine running directly behind the cockpit to the tail. When I tried to re-scribe the line (admittedly, scribing panel lines is my Achilles heel), I compounded the problem by inadvertently gouging a deep non-conforming line half the length of the fuselage.  My lack of attention and bad scribing technique was turning this “easy” build into a nightmare. 

After a self-imposed time-out and a restored faith in my abilities, I tackled the sanding and re-scribing issues with success, and moved on to painting.  Now, another nightmare awaited me.  And this one was a show-stopper.  Instead of decals, I decided to spray a red undercoat where the hinomarus (“disc of the sun” – the Japanese national insignia) were positioned, and mask over the red paint with discs cut from tape.  I would then paint the entire model with IJN gray and remove the masks to reveal the red insignia. Simple enough…or so I thought.  After painting the red base coat and letting it dry, I cut discs with my Olfa circle cutter out of blue painter’s tape and placed them into position.  I then sprayed the entire model with a special paint mix that approximated IJN gray.  So far so good.  Alas, when all was dry, I removed the tape discs… and pulled off ALL of the underlying red paint!  Panic time.  I was left with a perfectly painted Japanese aircraft, with one major exception: where the red national insignia should have been was nothing but shiny gray styrene plastic.  Bad technique again.  I hadn’t primed or prepped the surface at all!  My wife thought I was suffering from Tourette’s syndrome because of the shrieks and swear words emanating from my work shop.  I took a break, thought about it for a few days, and realized I had a few options, one of which was starting over (which truthfully was never considered).  I ended up re-cleaning, re-sanding and otherwise re-prepping the surface, which I should have done in the first place.  The second attempt went much better and things luckily turned out okay.   

Now it was time to confront the camouflage pattern.  Nishizawa’s chaotic scheme presented problems in representing it accurately.  First of all, the scheme is entirely unique.  Unlike standard schemes, the field-applied camouflage was a one off creation of a hurried ground crewman.  This uniqueness was further exacerbated by chipped and coral-blasted paint along the leading edges and fuselage caused by prop wash.  Due to the significance of the man who flew it and two famous photographs of the actual aircraft in flight, Nishizawa’s A6M3 has become a signature image, an historical trademark so to speak… much like Eddie Van Halen’s famous guitar.  They are both instantly recognizable yet extremely hard to duplicate. 

Specifically, the small camouflage pattern on the port side fuselage (just aft of the engine cowling) was so unique that it remains the primary signature of his aircraft.  After applying the haphazard overcoat of dark green in the field, the ground crewman evidently finished off (or started) his handiwork with a flourish of fluid loops and arches, much like a graffiti artist painting the letter “M” with a spray can or brush.  I consider myself above average with an airbrush, but duplicating this characteristic freehand at 1/48 scale was next to impossible.  I also knew that, if I could somehow pull it off, it would be the defining detail of a spot-on depiction of this aircraft.  Carefully hand painting the pattern was an option, but I quickly dismissed it after much thought and more than a few test failures.  Eventually I came up with a solution that took several days to pull together:  Using photographs of the actual aircraft and professional illustrations as references, I designed the small aft-cowling pattern using Corel’s Photo Paint graphics software.  When I had what I thought was a decent, faux-airbrush facsimile, I sized it, adjusted the RGB formula to match Polly Scale’s IJN Green paint and increased the resolution to photo quality.  After adjusting the gamma and a few test runs on the printer, I printed my computer-generated airbrush pattern on a sheet of Experts Choice clear decal paper made especially for laser printers.   (I also designed the notional starboard pattern, albeit from scratch and with complete artistic license, as no known references exist of the starboard pattern of this aircraft). I gloss coated the areas just aft of the cowling on both sides of the fuselage.  Very carefully (the color coating of laser printed decals is extremely fragile and prone to cracking), I slid both port and starboard decals into place.  They looked authentic, and when carefully blended with paint, my little idea came to life.  I was tickled pink, and for the first time in many weeks, I felt I was going to get the model finished.   

I applied the rest of the paint job by dabbing on IJN green with small flat brush and then blending it in with my Iwata HP-C airbrush, being careful to vary the consistency to achieve the desired look.  Because the green was field-applied to an existing scheme, the upper wing and fuselage hinomarus were not masked and edged with a clean border.  I used a freehand technique to portray this detail, which created an imperfect halo around the insignia. 

To simulate the faded and blasted appearance of the leading edges and areas of the upper wings that fell within the propeller arc, I used both the point of a toothpick and an old airbrush needle dipped in the IJN gray to create the miniscule paint chipping and sand blast effect so common of land-based fighters operating from coral islands.  It makes a nice visual transition from green to gray in this highly weathered area of the aircraft.

A note about my interpretation of the dorsal paint scheme: Careful study of the famous in-formation photo of his aircraft reveals that Nishizawa’s UI-105 had a broken scheme of green and gray running the length of the dorsal spine of the aircraft, from the aft canopy to the vertical stabilizer.  I interpreted this as the ground crew’s hasty application of green paint to areas on the aircraft which could be easily reached from the ground, i.e., fuselage sides, vertical surfaces and tops of wings.  Just an educated guess, but it looks extremely cool.

 For the tail code decals, I chose to depict the “105” sans the “UI”.  This is another contestable area of research.  In his book Imperial Japanese Aces, 1937-45, Henry Saikada points out that “the tail code of this fighter was originally UI-105, but at various times the prefix “UI” was painted out with the hastily applied green daubed over the remainder of the aircraft’s previously gray fuselage.”  Others have suggested that the ‘UI” was photographically removed in the two existing photos of UI-105 by Japanese intelligence in an effort to thwart tracing Nishizawa (Japan’s top ace) to a specific unit.  Either explanation could be correct; ultimately I decided to go with the sans “UI” scheme.

I then turned my attention to the spinner and propeller assembly.  It is apparent in photos that Nishizawa’s spinner was painted up to a point just forward of the prop blades.  What color this was is also contestable.  Several professional illustrators show it as green, while others portray it as brown.  Japanese aircraft historian Jim Lansdale has noted that the rear prop blades of A6M3-22’s were painted dark brown and the Mitsubishi factory was beginning to produce all-brown propellers during the IJN color scheme transition of mid-1943.  In the end, I chose to go with brown, for no other reason than it seems logical that the spinner carried the same color scheme as the aft prop blades and, graphically, the contrast looked better.  Regardless of what color the actual spinner was, it was severely weathered from both the salted airstream and harsh ground effects of the coral islands in which Nishizawa operated this aircraft from. After painting the prop and spinner with Alclad II aluminum, I carefully masked off the spinner with a strip of Parafilm M, a paraffin-based medical film that adheres to compound curves better than anything on the market.  After masking, I lightly faded in the brown with my airbrush; heavier at the demarcation line and thinner towards the tip of the spinner.  I finished things up by painting the aft-facing prop blades dark brown and finally joining the propeller and spinner assembly.

The canopy, as always, was a challenge.  Working with clear plastic is tough enough, but the bird-cage structure of the A6M canopy frame makes it a tougher…and you only get one shot at it.  After a dipping in Future, I carefully masked the canopy and windscreen, shot an initial coat of blue-black (to simulate interior framing) and followed up with a couple of light coats of IJN gray.  Decent results were attained. 

After that, the engine was built, and I sprayed the cowling blue-black.  Most A6M3 cowlings were glossy, but quickly faded in the relentless sun of the south pacific.  Photographs show Nishizawa’s cowling to be slightly glossy, so to portray this, I buffed the flat paint to a semi-gloss with a patch of cotton t-shirt.  I then used a sharpened graphite pencil to simulate chipping around the cowling latches and vents.  The engine was completed and, with the cowling, was slipped into place and now I had an airplane.  I finished things up by spraying the gear struts with Krylon gloss black and Alclad II chrome silver.  After careful weathering and dulling things down a bit, I mounted the gear at a two degree toe-in and attached the doors and other various hardware items.  The pitot tube and exhaust stacks were then glued into place.  After a few touch ups and a bit of weathering with a rubbed-out coat of raw umber oil wash, I flat coated the model with Polly Scale clear flat.  I attached the prop and spinner and Hiroyoshi Nishizawa’s A6M3 Zero was finally complete.

This simple build ended up being extremely hard to pull together, especially with conflicting research and a paint scheme that was tremendously difficult to portray.  True to the rule of thumb mentioned at the beginning of this post, nothing went as planned and I learned much from my efforts.  A special thanks to the Mr. Wayne Little at WW2 Aircraft.net and the research of Mr. Jim Lansdale and others on J-aircraft.com.  Their expert opinions and research significantly helped in the accuracy of this model. As always, thanks for visiting.  Enjoy the pics and stay tuned for upcoming builds. Cheers!



Hell's Angel

To say Charles Older was an overachiever is an understatement.  Excelling in every endeavor he undertook, he was one of those rare individuals whose life reads like an old Paul Harvey “The Rest of the Story” radio broadcast.  Eagle Scout. Student council president. Marine Corps aviator. Flying Tiger. Army aviator. Triple Ace.  Air Force aviator.  Law student. Attorney. California Superior Court Justice.   As a young UCLA student in the late 1930’s, he enlisted in the Marine Corps, was commissioned a lieutenant in the Reserves and earned the gold wings of a naval aviator.  Prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and lured by unforgettable adventure and a bigger paycheck, he resigned his commission in the Corps and joined the ranks of Claire Chennault’s American Volunteer Group, the famous Flying Tigers. Older's quiet demeanor hid well a competitive spirit that manifested itself in the front office of a fighter plane. Mild-mannered and quiet on the ground yet hellishly aggressive in the cockpit of a fighter plane, it is only fitting that he was a member of the AVG’s 3^rd Pursuit Squadron, the Hell’s Angels, whose very name speaks of this duality.   Flying against the invading Japanese fighters and bombers before and after the United States entered the war, Older plied his trade in the rugged, shark-mouthed Curtiss P-40B “Tomahawk” from the dirt strips and uncertain skies over China and Burma. 

With the likes of Tex Hill, Greg Boyington and a cast of more and lesser well-knowns, Older became a double ace with the Tigers, finishing his tour with 10 confirmed kills and was personally decorated by Chiang Kai-shek. 

 And now, for the rest of the story:  When the Flying Tigers were absorbed into the Army Air Forces in 1942, Older accepted an Army commission and ended the war as a P-51 pilot with a tally of 18 confirmed kills and 5 probables.  Upon returning home to California, he got married and enrolled in law school at the University of Southern California. When the Korean War kicked off, he once again answered the call and flew B-26’s with the 452^nd bomb group of what was now the United States Air Force.  After his tour and back home once again, he eventually finished law school and became a practicing attorney.  He bought a small bungalow near the UCLA campus where he and his wife Catherine raised three daughters. Older flourished as an attorney, culminating in his appointment as judge on the California Superior Court in 1967 by then Governor Ronald Reagan.  Then, on two consecutive August nights in 1969 in the affluent suburbs of Los Angeles, a group of young, crazed killers viciously murdered seven innocent people, including a beautiful young actress and her unborn child.  Their communal "family" leader, a demonic racist and failed musician, was tried for the hideous crimes. At one point during the trial, the accused man bolted from his seat and tried to violently attack the judge who, by all accounts, did not flinch or bat an eye. The judge calmly and quietly had him removed from the courtroom… and later sentenced him to death. After the gavel fell, convicted mass murderer Charles Manson was escorted to death row in shackles while the judge removed his robe and returned home to the quaint bungalow near the UCLA campus, where Charles Older lived happily with his Catherine until his death on June 17, 2006.

THE MODEL:  Trumpeter’s 1/48 scale P-40B Tomahawk was big news when it was released a few years ago, mainly because that aircraft (actually a Curtiss Hawk 81, tagged with British specs for the lend-lease program) had a rather dismal showing on the kit market in that scale. The alternatives were, and still are, the Hobbycraft and the ancient Monogram kits.  Both are awash with design flaws and outdated tooling (although the Monogram is very retro and possesses great lines).  Not wanting my build to turn into a complicated sculpture project, I waited for the anticipated release of the Trumpeter kit.  When it came out, I bought it and stuck it on the shelf in my basement closet (otherwise known as “The Hangar”) with the dozen or so odd kits waiting their turn on the bench.  I tend to wait before building brand new releases, as finished builds start popping up on the net and problems are immediately brought to light. Not show-stoppers, mind you, but scratch-your-chin problems.  For about a year, I absorbed what I could from fellow enthusiasts’ reviews and finally pushed it out of the hangar, blew off the dust and opened Pandora’s corrugated box.

For starters, I hate recessed rivets lines.  Well, most of them, anyway.  It’s a personal thing I guess… from spending a career inspecting and flying real military aircraft, I can tell you that most 1/48 scale recessed rivets are the equivalent of a hole so big in the actual aircraft that you could stick your middle finger in up to the first knuckle.  For some reason though, I can accept them on other kits.  Life is weird.  Anyway, the Trumpeter is overdone with rivets.   Rivets everywhere.  But I had an idea… more on this later. 

I knew I wanted to build Charles Older’s White 68, but was not impressed with the available decal markings for his aircraft.  Most of them are ill fitting to the new Trumpeter kit, and most decal companies portray the Chinese 12 point star insignias in a garish cyan blue.  The ones available of higher quality did not include Older’s markings. I finally found a set manufactured by a company named Stardust.  Perfect registration, authentic colors, accepting of setting solutions, and one of the best carrier films I have ever used.  (Note: Although great decals, a significant printing/spelling error was discovered after I had completed the model.  See the note at the end of this post.)

The actual build was pretty painless.  I am a sucker for aftermarket cockpits, so I threw one together, painted and detailed it, and slapped it in the fuselage halves. Wing joints and stabs went together without much effort and required little or no sanding.  I chose to model the flaps up as there were some fit and finish problems with the interior flap detail. Trumpeter’s plastic seems soft.  I didn’t really notice it until I sanded the mold lines off of the landing gear struts.  I lost a lot of detail during that process and ended up with a pair of struts that were slightly out of round and appeared a little lumpy.

The canopy was the most technical and difficult part of the entire build.  The P-40B had a flat bulletproof pane of glass installed inside of the exterior windscreen.  This interior pane has a painted frame.  Trumpeter does a wonderful job with this detail, but leaves it to the modeler to engineer how to go about it.  The clear plastic pane has slots that fit over tiny ridges on the interior of the windscreen.  I decided to dip the pane in Future, let it dry and paint the tiny frame bordering it.  When the windscreen was duly dipped and allowed to dry, I carefully tacked the pane in place with Future.  When all was said and done, my technique worked.  The rest of the canopy was masked and painted and set in place with clear Elmer’s school glue.

As I mentioned earlier, the AVG’s P-40 aircraft were “acquired” from a lend-lease shipment to England.  Because of this, specs included a British-type “crank” pitot tube.  The Trumpeter kit comes stock with the inline American pitot, so this presented a problem.  I ended up robbing the oversized British-style tube from the old Monogram P-40 kit and with a little sanding and re-shaping, I was satisfied with the result and mounted it to my Trumpeter kit. 

When all was assembled, I readied it for paint.  Here was my first real chin scratcher. The rivets.  They looked like acne scars.  And then the light bulb turned on.  Instead of 40 watts, it came in the form of a $3 bottle of White Out (correction fluid) with the press-pen applicator. I pressed a dab of WhiteOut in every rivet hole on the model.  The Tzus fasteners on the cowling and access covers I left alone, as they are modeled relatively well and look pretty cool.  When the WhiteOut dried, I sanded the rivet lines flush with the surface, being careful not to sand away parallel recessed panel lines.  The beauty of this technique is that White Out shrinks a bit when it dries.  This left slight dimples where the rivets were and takes away the harshness of the out-scale-effect.  In other words, the rivets are still there, but not really.  Also, this technique gives a slight stressed skin look to the model. A win/win situation in my book.

Now for the paint.  Again, my Paasche VL with Polly Scale British Dark Green, Earth and a home brewed mix of grays and tans to reproduce what I assume to be a close approximation to the color used on the belly of Britain bound P-40’s.  There are a lot of discussions and downright arguments on this particular color. British Sky?  Medium Sea Gray? US Gray? Bottom line:  They were British spec colors painted by American aircraft factories using mostly DuPont paints.   Do the research, draw your own conclusions and throw the dart. The hard edge camouflage was my second chin scratcher.  I chose to draw the pattern on sections of 3” blue painter’s tape from scale drawings. The pattern was then cut on a glass pane and applied to the model over the dark earth base coat and then sprayed with dark green.  I did this in segments, i.e., left wing, right wing, left fuselage, etc.  On both upper wings, the remnant circular shapes of the original British roundels were incorporated into the green/brown camouflage pattern.  To portray this, I used a circle template in addition to my freehand drawing of the pattern. After the base camouflage pattern and underside were painted, I masked and painted the red squadron stripe and put the airbrush away for awhile.

I glossed the model with Polly Scale gloss acrylic and applied the aforementioned Stardust decals. They went on without a hitch, to include the two-piece shark mouth.  I took care in weathering Older’s White 68.  Photos show it was continuously dusty, a bit faded and covered with oil and fuel spills. 

My thoughts on weathering are “less is better” when dealing with scale.  I portrayed the weathering and paint as accurately as possible with super thin paints and washes.  I dirtied everything up with a burnt umber oil wash and wiped main panel areas clean with a piece of cotton t-shirt slightly dampened with thinner.  After the perquisite streaks and spills were portrayed to my satisfaction, I sprayed on a couple of thin layers of Polly Scale flat.  IMO, here is the money-maker as far as realistic weathering goes:  On flat painted surfaces of real aircraft, oil and fuel spills are actually absorbed into (and stain) the paint.  With the model flat-coated and essentially finished, I take the smallest pointed artist brush and dab on highly-thinned grimy oil washes to key areas such as cowlings, fuel and gun panels.  The flat coat immediately absorbs the grimy wash and spreads it uncontrollably, like touching a wet brush to a napkin.  This requires planning and patience.  Do not over do it.  The effect is amazing, but remember, a little goes a long way.  It’s like watercolor painting… once it hits surface, your job is done. 

When all was done to my satisfaction, I added the two blue position lights on either side of the mid fuselage sides.  A shout-out here to the guys at http://www.ww2aircraft.net/ .  In building this model, I was not convinced Older’s aircraft (or any British spec P-40 for that matter) had the position lights installed.  Sure enough, with the suggestions of some great modelers at WW2 Aircraft, I came across an-flight photo of White 68 with the position lights.  Check out their website… they are a great group of guys and enjoy assisting anyone with research, technical questions, modeling and all things WWII aviation.  So, there you have it, folks.  I’ve got another model on the bench, almost ready to go and I’ll post it as soon as I finish it up.  Please leave comment right below the pics, I appreciate the feedback.  Once again, thanks for stopping in!

Galland's Emil

During the height of the Battle of Britain in 1940, Hermann Goering visited the Luftwaffe fighter units arrayed along the Channel Front in western France.   During a stop at Jagdgeschwader 26 (JG26) and growing impatient of the stalemate in the battle for air superiority over London and the perceived lack of effort from his fighter pilots, Goering berated his officers to the point of insinuating cowardice.  In reality, it was Goering’s lack of understanding of fighter tactics and strategy that led to the impasse.  He insisted that his fighters stick close to the bombers, robbing them of initiative and the freedom to roam, acquire and attack the enemy.   The fighter commanders countered, arguing that only by unleashing their Messerschmitts in the same way the British unleashed their Spitfires, could the battle be won.  Goering dismissed this notion, becoming more infuriated with their insolence.  After minutes of silence from his appalled and humiliated pilots, Goering smiled, apologized for his outburst and calmly asked a young squadron commander what immediate need the Luftwaffe high command could provide him.  The young German officer with dark, slicked-back hair and Clark Gable mustache glared at the Reichmarshall and smartly replied:

“I should like an outfit of Spitfires for my squadron.”

If he never did another thing in his entire life, Adolf Galland guaranteed himself aviation legend status with those ten spoken words.  But Galland indeed did more.  He shot down a total of 104 aircraft, was awarded the coveted Knights Cross with oak leaves, swords and diamonds, introduced the Me-262 jet fighter into combat with the famed JV-44 and was a lauded innovator of fighter tactics that are used to this day.  When his mentor, General of Fighters Werner Moelders, was killed in a plane crash, Goering promoted Galland to the position, thus becoming the youngest General in the German armed forces.  He was a swaggering presence who enjoyed women and cognac equally and was rarely seen without his ever-ready black cigar perched in his fingers (much to the chagrin of Adolf Hitler).  Without his deadly serious attitude towards air combat (and a record to back it up) he could have been judged as larger than life... cartoonish.  In fact, the only thing cartoonish about the man was the Mickey Mouse character he had painted on his aircraft (even it had a sinister side; Galland’s Mickey held a hatchet and pistol and clenched a cigar in its teeth).  Perhaps more than all this, Galland was a gentleman warrior, respected and revered by his men and enemies alike for the sense of decency and respect he gave to all combatants, regardless of nationality.  To note, despite his rank of general officer, Galland was never a member of the Nazi party and was never suspected or investigated for involvement in war crimes.  

There are many great stories of Galland; too many to relate within the confines of this blog. Besides the beautifully insubordinate answer to an enraged Hermann Goering, two more Galland tales are worth at least mentioning: He once loaded the storage compartment of his Bf 109F with champagne and lobsters and flew off to the 49th birthday party of General Theo Osterkamp. On a hunch, he led his wingman over the Channel and found an unlucky flight of Spitfires conducting aerial training near Dover. He shot down three Spits in quick order and made his way back to the festivities without breaking a single bottle of bubbly.

On another occasion, Galland’s unit tangled with a group of British Spitfires near Saint-Omer, France in August, 1941.  Upon returning to base, Galland discovered famed British pilot, the legless Douglas Bader had gone down in the melee, survived and was in custody of German forces. Galland invited Bader to stay with JG26 for a few days as a guest of honor, an act of respect and true chivalry. Galland gave him the grand tour, wined and dined with him and almost let him take a Messerschmitt around the pattern. He even arranged with the Red Cross to give “free passage” to British aircraft at a set time to air-drop new prosthetic legs for Bader, whose previous ones were destroyed in the dogfight and subsequent bail-out. The air-drop did occur but not without the British taking full advantage of the “free passage”… Galland’s airfield was immediately strafed by Spitfires, but otherwise undamaged in this exchange of pleasantries.   Note: Galland and Bader would become lifelong friends after the war, with Bader returning the favor of hospitality to Galland as the latter was held in England during the post-war interrogation process. 

General Adolf Galland lived a long and productive life after the war.  He was the rare leader who was respected by all who knew him and flew with or against him.  He enjoyed the friendship of his former adversaries, built a successful aviation consultancy business and was a beloved speaker and member of The Gathering of Eagles.  He lived in a comfortable home in Oberwinter, Germany among his war relics and memories, where he died on February 9, 1996 with his wife and two grown children present.

THE MODEL:  Tamiya’s 1/48 scale Messerschmitt Bf 109E 4/7 was an absolute pleasure to build.  From taking off the cellophane to attaching the prop to the finished model, there was not one negative experience.  I chose to build Galland’s “Emil”, work  number 5819, which had a non-standard, transitional paint scheme and (for a brief time) an optical scope mounted through the windscreen.  (Note:  the scope was not used to “aim at” enemy aircraft during a dogfight, but rather search for them at long distances in cruise flight). This particular aircraft had 57 kills denoted on the rudder, which places it circa late November/December, 1940. Galland would spend just a few months in this mount before being promoted to Oberst and taking delivery of a new F Model in early 1941. Research shows that this particular Emil went through various paint jobs in 1940, with variations of an RLM 02/71/65 scheme and a later experimental (soon to be standard) scheme of RLM 74/75/76. The prop spinner also changed frequently, from color variations of yellow and white, to “capped” and “uncapped” configurations.  Ultimately, it was the yellow cowlings that Galland and his aircraft of JG26 were famous for, immediately recognizable to the British and earned them sobriquets such as “The Abbeville Boys” and “The Yellow Nosed Bastards”.

Coming out of the box at a slow trot, I built up and painted an Aires resin cockpit and added a set of Ultracast wheels and seat.  I made my share of goofs and do-overs during the main build (the cantilevered tail struts really tested my patience).  The trickiest part was modeling and mounting the telescopic scope, which required a lot of planning and forethought. To begin with, the Tamiya does not include the optional windscreen with a hole in it for the scope (as Hasegawa’s “Galland” Bf 109E4 does).  So I taped both sides of the clear windscreen with blue painters tape, and carefully bored a tiny hole through the plastic with my Dremel and a micro bit.  (The tape is an absolute necessity… it prevents the drill bit from skipping and the brittle clear plastic from cracking).  Next, I fashioned a miniature scope tube from a hypodermic needle and two eye pieces from aluminum tube (which telescopically fit the needle). I hand sanded and ground both eye pieces to form an accurate taper.  I then painted these three pieces black and detailed them with a #2 lead pencil.  Gluing one eyepiece onto the end of the tube, I then mounted the tube through the windscreen hole, set it with clear jewelers glue, and finished by gluing on the other tapered eyepiece.

After the telescopic scope, it was off to the races.    The ‘Schmitty was assembled, sanded and prepped and given a quick pre-shading of RLM 66 scale black.  I don’t always pre-shade my builds, but in this case I think the combination and light colors and patterns demanded it.  I also pre-shaded the cowling with burnt umber which brought out some amazing engine-heat detail on the RLM 04 Yellow cowling .  I shot the entire model (sans cowling and rudder) with RLM 76 Light Gray and followed up with the RLM 74/75 camouflage.  The entire scheme was shot freehand with my Paasche VL, with the exception of the straight edge wing and upper fuselage demarcations.  For those, I floated a template just above the surface, held in place with little balls of poster putty, and sprayed the darker color over the light. This gave a subtle feathered edge to the patterns.  After the paint and gloss coat, I peeled open a Ziploc baggie of Aeromaster’s  “Kommodore Galland” decals (PAF 48-01, saved and unopened since 1998) and went to work. 

I had to be extremely careful in the depiction of Galland’s Work Number 5819.  Most of his Bf 109E’s during the Battle of Britain were very similar in their markings. He and his mounts are well documented with black and white photographs, but the similarities make the research frustrating.   It is known that he experiemented with the "grays" (RLM 74/75/76) scheme before it became standard and perhaps the color photo below taken in December, 1940 denotes this.  Most photos of his aircraft include only partial shots, so without reference to a rudder and/or kill markings, my guess is that most models of Galland’s mount at an exact time and place in late 1940 are an amalgam of his several planes and paint jobs.  Mine most certainly is, although I’d like to think otherwise. 

Enjoy the pics, and again, thanks for stopping by. Please leave a comment. Stay tuned for the next post. Cheers!