European Air War - The Gen

Had a wander through some 1.6 projects currently on the backburner. These are from a projected "1940" setup which will include upgraded and improved 1.6 versions of Attack in the West, Dunkirk, and Bomber Command.









Works in (slow!) progress, Italy/Balkans?Ukraine being the priority at the moment.

I watched a docuseries called "Storming Juno" last week. It was fairly well produced with only a few nits to pick.

In one scene the Canadian paratroopers were crammed into some "old bombers", as the script described them, to be dropped behind the lines.

Though they didn't mention the aircraft name, the exterior shots depicted a nose wheel equipped, twin engine, twin rudder plane.....................which could only be the Albemarle. Which wasn't an old design by any stretch. (Consider that nit picked).

Knowing my penchant for building the odd balls of the aviation world, it won't surprise you that I'm almost done with a new addition to the inventory.

I did some research into this plane and as it turns out it wasn't the dog I always assumed it was. Perfectly adequate performance when first built, it had fallen behind by the middle of 1944, not because the design was lacking, but because the Air Ministry changed it's intended mission mid-stream to recon and transport. This delayed introduction enough that other, more capable planes eclipsed it.

I also found out the Brits sent 12 to Russia.

Anyhow, I'm working on one for our inventory with Canadian squadron markings but I'll include one with Russian markings too.

I see that the Russians weren't so much interested in the Albemarle, as in its Bristol Hercules engines, which were reverse engineered and subsequently copied by Soviet industries.

The Albemarle makes it into the inventory:

Mk 1 and 2 are the same except the Mk1 was to be a bomber while the Mk 2 was designated Recon / Transport. The Mk 1 had 4 x 303's in the turret, the Mk 2 had 2 x 303's.


The Russian version:



And of course a "what-if' ground attack version Mk 6 with 8 x 303's in the nose and the 4 gun turret:

Nice job. Good to have another in the Soviet inventory.