One of the first great fighters, the Fokker Eindecker earned its place in
aviation history by being the aircraft that spawned the infamous “Fokker
Scourge”. This period,
spanning the fall of 1915 to the spring of 1916, saw the German Air Force
gain a high degree of air superiority over the battlefields of
Western Europe
during World War 1.
One of the features that made the
Eindecker so successful was that it was one of the first aircraft that
featured a machine gun that was synchronized to fire through the arc of
the propeller. This allowed
the machine gun to be mounted on the centerline of the aircraft right in
front of the pilot, greatly simplifying the task of shooting down the
enemy. All the pilot had to
do (relatively speaking) was line up his fighter with the enemy and pull
the trigger. The Allies had
no equivalent to Fokker’s synchronizing device, and Allied pilots paid
dearly because of it.
The Eindecker ruled the skies until
new Allied designs like the Nieuport 11 and 17 arrived and began to wrest
air supremacy back from the Germans.
Famous German Aces like Oswald Boelcke and Max Immelmann became
household names in their native country flying the Eindecker.
I decided to build Flashback’s kit as an Eindecker E.II,
“E37/15”. This particular
aircraft was flown by both of both Immelmann and Boelcke at different
times during the fall of 1915.
The Eduard/Flashback kit is somewhat basic when compared to today’s
state of the art, but construction is straightforward and the small parts
do a good job conveying how delicate the machine must have been.
The Eindecker had a large amount of rigging, with four wires
running from each side of each wing!
I wasn’t looking forward to tackling that task.
Once I got into it however I discovered that I could attach one end
of some fishing line to the top center post, run it out to one of the
holes in the wing, thread it down through the wing, run it back underneath
to the landing gear, across to a hole in the other wing, thread it back up
through the wing, and back to the top center post again.
By repeating this loop three more times the rigging was completed
much quicker than I thought it would be, all using one continuous piece of
fishing line!
Click on
images below to see larger images
The model was painted Testors Acrylic Radome Tan to simulate Clear Doped
Linen. The kit’s decals
were used for the large crosses, and I hand-painted “E37/15” on both
sides of the fuselage. I much
prefer decals to my shaky hand-painting...
To simulate the
swirled metal finish on the sheet metal cowling I placed dots of Testors
Steel over the Testors Aluminum base.
Though I’m not in love with the effect, it looks reasonably good
to me, and breaks up the monotony of the all-beige paint scheme.
To weather the Eindecker I placed some dots of Burnt Umber, Lamp Black,
and Burnt Sienna oil paint all over the beige surfaces and then spread
them around in all directions using thinner to create a subtle, grimy
look. On the vertical
surfaces I tried to create a downward streaking effect. A very thin 50/50 mix of Tamiya Black and Red Brown was sprayed in
subtle bands along the fuselage to create the perception of the
aircraft’s internal framing, and the model was done.
The Eindecker is a neat little aircraft and I’m glad to add it to my
collection. I don’t know if
we’ll ever see a new version of the kit in the future, but this one can
be found on ebay. My dream
has been to build a collection of the “50 Greatest Fighters” in 1/48
scale and display them all on one table so one can get a real sense of
scale comparing the Eindecker of 90 years ago to the Raptor of today.
Of course at the rate I build, it might take me 90 years to get
there!
Scott
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