Plane Dave

Hypothetical

I would guess the idea of “Hypothetical” builds immediately conjures thoughts of “Luftwaffe ’46” subjects for most of us. Back in the ’90s I think there were whole TV series built on this idea! Although such subjects do have some passing interest to me (really, who doesn’t like seeing outrageous jet fighters that never progressed past napkin doodles?!) I bet most readers will not be too surprised to hear I’m actually more interested in things with more plausibility. Especially aircraft that could have appeared in the middle of the War without such massive disruptions of the space/time continuum…

So for my first foray into this theme I won’t do any Luftwaffe ’46. You may not believe me when you see my list! In order (from least to most, errr, “hypothetical”) I will do an A6M2-N Rufe, F5F Skyrocket, Messerschmitt Me 509 and P-80 Shooting Star. If any of that makes you question my “least to most” claim, let’s just say I consider actual changes to War timelines more significant than production or engineering decisions.
As always, I won’t be giving away any more spoilers about my subjects until their individual posts drop.

I have built a few such models before. I think its occasionally fun to visualize things that never quite were. I also like it as an exercise in looking at how things came to be, and what it would have taken to change them. Hopefully this will be fun for all of us, or at least we can have a good argument about why I think its fun. I think these will all be pretty simple builds and will take about three weeks each.

Light Aircraft (Liaison/Support/Training)

That was fun, and took a little longer than I expected. I don’t think I’ll revisit this theme, but I still have another Stearman and Bf 108 that will show up some other way at a later date.

I’ll let you all in on a little secret, I kind of considered this a bunch of aircraft I wasn’t really very interested in. The Stearman and Po-2 were truly about Dave learning to be less intimidated by rigging. The Staggerwing also has some, but surprisingly little.
I’ll call the rigging a valuable and semi-successful lesson. I may approach a stash of Gladiators and CR.42s with less apprehension than I previously had!

Messerschmitt Bf 108B-1 Taifun
Beechcraft YC-43 Staggerwing
Polikarpov U-2
Boeing-Stearman PT-17 Kaydet

Ironically, the Bf 108 wound up being the least acceptable build of the bunch! I just failed on the glossy two-tone finish. And by the time I knew I’d failed I was too lazy to go back.

As I stated at the beginning of this, I will take a couple months off from “themes” and do some vehicles. Four of those are planned before I jump into the next theme, probably late winter/early Spring 2021.
Coming soon… Hypotheticals