January 1, 2012

For The Year's End, My Friends: Aeroplane In A Bottle....

This is my favorite of the models I have done over the past year. It is a Caudron G.VI, scratch-built in 1/72 scale (six feet to the inch). Though a major part of French equipment during 1917, it has fallen into obscurity even among students of the period, and it is only fair to mention it had a reputation as a very difficult machine to fly, being both prone to spin and very hard to pull out of a spin once one was begun.

This particular machine, C5472, was part of Escadrille C575, formed at Port Said in August of 1918, and retained as a mainstay of French air power in the region, based at Beirut, till 1921.