Plain ol' Planes

Before Covid I could buy bags of toy fighter planes for $2.99.
10 per bag.

Now they are more expensive...
They kinda look like Focke Wolfs. Radial engines, the tail and aleron’s look right.
I painted one up long ago on another post:

http://dougssoldiers.blogspot.com/2010/10/some-dollar-store-silliness.html?m=0


So having a bunch of these:

I tried some basic paint jobs:

Sadly, I coated the planes with an off the shelf acrylic gloss coating that is peeling up and taking the paint with it.
Live and learn.
Some other tries. I really liked the grey and brown one, it had the look of a French Bloch type fighter:

Then I started cutting up the fighters and adding balsa wood and Tamiya model putty.
A sorta Stuka:

An RAF desert P-40:

A desert Me-109E:

I have some others on the go. A Vultee Vengeance, a Japanese Ann, and a Hawker Typhoon.

***update added August 9, 2020***

Okay, here’s my soap box moment.
I bought three war films from Amazon.
Midway (the new one), Dunkirk, and Pearl Harbor.

I’m convinced the movie makers never talked to a pilot or a historian.
Midway had lots of action and explosions, but at the Pearl Harbor attack scene, there are some Kate’s dropping torpedos nose on with the battleships, not at right angles.
And the biggest beef, with all the cgi, there are NO WILDCAT fighters on the American carriers. No Buffalos on Midway either.
And historically, the B-26’s from Midway were armed with torpedoes, not bombs.
Just my whining, but it bugged me.

Then I watched Dunkirk.
Ok, I get it.
Vignettes to capture the mood of the times.
But how much ammo was on those Spitfires?
I read (maybe incorrectly) that the RAF fighters had 6-8 seconds of firing loaded.
The guy in the film must have been pulling a trailer of ammo,
Anyway after downing four Me-109 E’s and two He-111’s, he ran out of fuel, and shot down a Stuka that tried to bomb Henry the Fifth, ... I mean Kenneth Branagh.
THEN he made a perfect landing on an EMPTY Dunkirk beach and surrendered to the Germans.
Dunkirk?
Stunkirk!

Finally Ben Affleck’s Pearl Harbor.
He gets killed in the first half hour, but he comes back.
Lots of action at Pearl Harbor.
The Vals are level bombing here.
But the real crazy thing is that after Affleck shoots down a bunch of Zeros, he gets drafted to fly B-25’s for Doolittle.
So after 3 hours he’s still alive.
Damn.