SPA Modeler

That time again. In the last update I missed something. The kit canopy has a glazed portion behind the opening section. This appears to be another later modification and is not present of any of the gliders at Eben. So using some sheet styrene I added this portion of the fuselage.



With the pit finished and the bench in pace I was able to finish off construction by fitting the wings, tail and the few other parts.







When I was adding the lever to the cockpit IP I think is for the tow cable release, I realised there was no attachment point for said cable. On checking some pics I noticed a small hole at the front just under the nose. Guessing that this is for the tow cable, I drilled this out.



Next up was a coat of primer and some paint. Its hardly the most challenging scheme in the history of aircraft and makes RLM 70/71 splinter look exciting. The Germans painted these aircraft a single colour, which I believe was RLM 02, just before the assault, including covering up all markings, in an attempt to confuse the Belgium's.





I have never pre shaded an aircraft before, and now I know why. A lot of images show a dark circle on the fuselage side where the black cross would be. I am guessing the cross was painted over with black first to stop the cross showing through. I painted the black circle before painting, but despite thinning the paint sand spraying very lightly over that patch, the circle vanished, as you can tell above. After about 3 attempts, I finally got it, though it is very faint and doesn't show in the pics below either.

After finally getting this sorted, I used some Flory wash in the recessed areas and then lightly dry brushed with the base colour and white oil paint. Its still wet in the pics below and I will have to wait a day or two before I can do the underside.





So that's how the glider sits for now. next, the base. The side received a single coat of wood stain and then several coats of varnish.



Once dry, the celluclay, mixed with some white glue and acrylic paint's to get the colour wanted, was added. I use the paint sold in large bottles designed for children and you get lots of it and its pretty cheap. This was left for a couple of days to dry in a warm place and then just went around the edges filling in where it shrank. I must have got the mix right this time as shrinkage was minimal.



Then today I got all the grass and some bushes added





Finally, the weapons and figures. Squad 8 carried 2 of the large 50kg hollow charge weapons.



And 3 of the smaller 12.5kg weapons.



The Preiser set has 3 of the larger devices and 2 of the smaller. As you can see, the small device is pretty well replicated, but the larger one is just a flat dish.



You can see in the image of the large device a join towards the bottom. It can in two sections, and several accounts report it being assembled on the objective. This makes sense as trying to carry 110Ib load one handed, as 2 of the Preiser figures are, while running in a crouch would be near impossible. carrying that load on your back is bad enough. So using some sprue from the kit which was just about the right dimensions, I scratch built the 2 large devices and one of the smaller ones.

I still have to add the carrying handles to these.





And finally the figures. The trousers were painted with Tamiya field grey, I then dry brushed these. The smocks were done in Vallejo Green Grey.



Next up i'll get on with the figures while I leave the oils on the glider to dry. I also have to finish off some barb wire.

Thanks for looking, all comments welcome.

I'm digging the work on these figs...this is a great combination of scale modeling and recreating history, which is what I tried to do with my dios...

I have the Osprey book in their "Raid" series on the Eben Emael assault and it has a great map showing where every glider landed and where the paratroops from each attacked...cool stuff...

Thanks Manny, that's what I try and do with dio's as well. But its not often I am able to place a build at an exact place in an exact moment in time.

ye, I have that book as well, one of 4 I am using. I have seen a few maps showing the position of the gliders, how ever none on them match each other exactly and also none of them exactly match the aerial photo have in another book. The positions the gliders came to rest is pretty close, but the orientation is out, and for this that was important so I could have the figures running in the right direction.

If you look at that map, you can see that glider 5 is facing a completely different direction from 8. yet in this pic, which shows 5 on the left and 8 on the right, they are roughly facing the same way.



I know that's being picky, but it made it pretty hard to be able to identify an exact glider on the photo's when comparing them to the map's. The only two I could be sure of was 5 and 8. And I needed to know for the number of figures and the equipment they were carrying. O, and glider number 7i was sure of as it was a complete wreck, but I didn't fancy that.

I know some would say this is going to far, but for me, its all part of the fun, even if it is a bit frustrating.

The most useful book to me is ''The Fall of Eben Emael'' by James Mrazek. It has a list of all the squads as well as what equipment each one carried. that was really handy.

Great info...luckily, Squad 8 had significant targets and objectives so it makes that glider/squad an important element in the attack...

Indeed. And the fact that they suffered a casualty almost straight away and the squad split to deal with 2 objectives makes it a more interesting dio than 8 men all heading in the same direction.

That’s really cool Bish – it’s nice to see something a bit different and great work so far. And I really like your dio idea – it’ll be good to see when done.
It’s a bit smaller than a Horsa isn’t it.

Thanks Portman. I like to try and do something a bit more unusual now and again.

In regards to the Horsa, I had to look it up. The DFS is about 5m shorter in the wing and 9m in length. Of course, the Horsa has a much wider body and can carry a lot more than the DFS.

Really interesting dio! Can't wait to see it finished.

Sounds like a well researched diorama. Great attention to detail.

Superb work Bish, actually i'm a fan of Huma Modell