SPA Modeler

Great choice!! Here is what Humbrol 174 (Signal Red Satin) looks like in stages of preparing an Eduard 1/48 version. Photographs are from britmodeller.

Yup! :-)

- Kari

Oh I like that color! I may have to use that on some of my Korean War USAF builds. They used a rather similar shade of red there at times.

Thanks Stik,

for some years ago I did my Hellcat drone, unfortunately the pics are not visible any longer as they were saved on Photobucket...
But there is just something in these red planes!

- Kari

KSaarni wrote:Thanks Stik,

for some years ago I did my Hellcat drone, unfortunately the pics are not visible any longer as they were saved on Photobucket...
But there is just something in these red planes!

- Kari

Yes there is!

Sean Moir, curator of military and political history at Royal Alberta Museum, holds a piece of Manfred von Richthofen’s triplane scavenged after he was shot down at Morlancourt Ridge, near Vaux-sur-Somme, France, April 21, 1918. The piece belonged to Wilfrid Reid “Wop” May as he was the last person the famous Red Baron chased. It’s now part of the Royal Alberta Museum’s vast collection of Great War artefacts.

I wonder how much that color has shifted from 1918...

But if there is any example of a red plane, that is THE ONE.

speedgraflex wrote:Sean Moir, curator of military and political history at Royal Alberta Museum, holds a piece of Manfred von Richthofen’s triplane scavenged after he was shot down at Morlancourt Ridge, near Vaux-sur-Somme, France, April 21, 1918. The piece belonged to Wilfrid Reid “Wop” May as he was the last person the famous Red Baron chased. It’s now part of the Royal Alberta Museum’s vast collection of Great War artefacts.

What a coincidence Bruce, almost amazing!

On Saturday the 21st of April, I will join a one day tour of the Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen.
I just paid some couple of days ago the participant fee for the one-day tour!

The picture below is in dutch, as the entire tour will be mainly in dutch language.


But we will visit all the "key" spots, a free translation of the places:

Cappy: The airfield where Red Barons last flight started from
Vaux sur Somme: Where he was shot down
Bertangles: The spot where his first grave was before moved
Fricourt: His second (!) grave (.. before moved for the 3rd time to family grave in Germany)
Pozière: Lunch here
Thiepval: A big memorial, cemetary + museum
Beaumont-Hammel: Again, an "authentic" WW1 threch + information center

Of course, the bus will drive back and forth the battlefield of Somme, so there will be a lot to see even if not formally included in the agenda. There are still fields, that has been left untouched since the great war, and that is our last program that Saturday.


Here you can see 3 fields, one has been kept in the condition it looked like 100 years ago, but those two other fields still show the craters and you can even see some remaining on threnches. Quite incredibel to be honest.

The funny thing is, Somme is only 2 hrs drive from my home, but have never visited the place

But instead Ieper (or Ypres in French), Passchendale and all the battlefields in the Ieper salient I have visited many times.

I am very excited and very much looking forward to the tour!

- Kari

Kari,

I think... there are no coincidences! I am excited for you, and reminded of touring the Gettysburg battlefields during mist-shrouded days with my father, and how I came to believe in ghosts with the land itself a conduit for so many souls, a buried stack of hard drives for the 50,000 killed, so much information. I read something attributed to Stanley Kubrick which may have been written by Arthur C. Clark which I must unfortunately paraphrase at the moment: “Behind each of us living today stands thirty ghosts.”

For me, that is how I relate to Sommes—the mud and the muck and the dread—and I am grateful that there are those like you who make the journey of remembrance.

The Red Baron was quite a figure of childhood to me! Chivalry, honor and feats of daring agility in the air are always associated with him, the cult of personality rather then a man. I would be most curious what insights you receive from this trip!

That is very interesting you bring up regarding Gettysburg and your experiences when you visited the place with your father.

I can also almost sense, the ghosts of the battlefields of Ypres Salient, when visiting the big graveyards. There is such, almost mysterious atmosphere there. And also, knowing that thousands and thousands soldiers just vanished/perished on the battlefields, never to be found... wakes up some certain thoughts.. and then one only realise, that all the fields where potatos, wheat, corn etc is cropped... is actually in a soil filled with probably still human remains.
Horrible war and that you sense.

Actually that sense came very close, summer 2012, when I took my own "yearly" on day around Ypres. I went to see a famous battleground, "Hill 60" (for those of you who are interested can check this page of Hill 60 )
While walking around there, I saw in the ground something that took in my eye. It had rained a lot the previous day, so the ground had been washed with a lot of running water causing bigger channels in the ground. And there I saw some pieces that did not look like stones... I picked them up and immediately felt they were heavy... Shrapnels ! What a strange feeling went through me, because suddenly I was back in 1915, 1916, 1917 or even 1918

Below what I found, the two bigger parts are iron shrapnels and the smaller pieces from gun shells. I could see from very weak marks in one of the shell, that it was an english rifle shell...


I will certainly try to do a report of my Somme visit on SPAM !

I am not that excited of the Fokker Tri-plane "as such", but I somehow feel I will be that after the tour! :-)

- Kari